India: High School Girls Getting into High End Prostitution

Yet to pass out of teenage years, young girls are being pushed
by lifestyle demands into high-end prostitution

CALCUTTA, INDIA -- Riya (name changed) claims to be 18 years old but looks younger. She is wearing a body-hugging low-waist jeans and a white skintight cropped top that may look a little too screaming, but she could be a teen party-goer. Though Riya works at night.

She claims she is from New Delhi. The aspiring model says she is a first-year science student who has come to the city to follow up a modelling assignment. She services clients on the side. She can’t do so in New Delhi because her family stays there, but has clients in Mumbai too. Her rate for an evening — Rs 3,500 [approx. $82 US], out of which Rs 1,000 [approx. $29US] will go to the “contact” (read her agent).

But her agent Meera (name changed) has a different story. “She is very much from the city and goes to one of the high-end schools here. Otherwise her rate would be much higher. Girls from outside the city cost a lot more,” she says. “Most of the girls make up such stories,” she adds.

Mobile syndrome

Riya is not alone. Like her, more young girls, many of them “English-speaking” and allegedly from reputed schools, are joining the high end of prostitution to earn that extra buck. Much of it has to do with the demands of lifestyle.

“Student prostitution has increased in the last five to six years. Especially since the price of mobiles has gone down. It makes students more accessible,” says an NGO worker in the city who works with the floating population of women in prostitution...

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