Governments are addicted to bliss, that is why they carefully practise the art of ignorance. There is absolutely no reason why successive governments should have remained in innocent darkness about the perverse orientation of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act. This law, meant to protect women either engaged in sex work or being sold into it, has traditionally punished them instead. It has been a useful weapon in the hands of the police, who are empowered by it to search premises on suspicion. Women are molested, harassed, beaten up, evicted, locked up, without anything ever happening to the ?traffickers?, brothel-keepers or ?agents?. Women?s bodies, such as the National Commission for Women, lawyers, sex workers? organizations, whether in Calcutta or Surat, have been campaigning for the removal of a law that is only used to victimize the victims. Sex workers and their troubles, however, were unlikely to give the government sleepless nights.

It has taken many years for the government to shake off its slumber, and the reason for that too is rather odd. A sudden realization has dawned that this anti-trafficking law has not caught any traffickers, just women who have been trafficked. The government had been in peaceful ignorance of trafficking too. The sale of women and children, including their export, is now a vast, intricately networked and enormously enriching business. The warnings and the desperate efforts of non-governmental institutions had been for long in vain. But the business is now so brazenly conducted that the efforts at ignorance are beginning to crack. It is not merely sex work that trafficking is concerned with. Slavery of various kinds, for domestic work or pornographic films, is a thriving business. It is this that has caused the government to decide on amendments to the original act, so that it no longer punishes the victims but targets the perpetrators instead. While such a change of mind is welcome, certain other issues have to be immediately dealt with. Trafficking by itself is immoral, the phrase, ?immoral trafficking?, deliberately stigmatizes sex work in order to target sex workers. Also, such a law erases the distinction between coerced and voluntary sex work. Unless there is a law ? and a mindset behind it ? that punishes violence, coercion and deception and the people who trade in human misery, no amendment will be enough.