Sita belongs to Perna caste, and among the women and girls of this acutely marginalised community, entering the sex trade is a usual next step after marriage and childbirth. They travel in a group, sharing the rickshaw fare and the risk of assault. They conduct encounters in cars or hidden outdoor nooks. While one woman is with a client, a friend will make sure to stay within shouting distance.
Unlike Sita and many others, she only entered the sex trade when she was widowed, and moved back to Dharampura locality in Najafgarh, her childhood home. But it is less a ritual than a remedy for an inherited economic need. She feels she has no path of escape. She is consumed for eight or 10 years, and then she is asked to put her daughter into prostitution. But even in the absence of coercion, choice is a fraught concept in a community which is not only economically and socially marginalised, but historically excluded from the rights and freedoms of citizenship.
These are the DNTs, or Denotified and Nomadic Tribes of India, who are still more commonly recognised in mainstream society under their colonial-era classification: the Criminal Tribes. Historically itinerant traders, entertainers, and folk-craft practitioners, DNT communities are often compared with the Roma in Europe.
Welfare programmes have been offered to the most marginalised communities β those social groups classed as the Scheduled Castes SCs and Tribes STs. Not only has their past taught the community to be wary of the state, but their alienation from mainstream society has meant many of them are ignorant of their rights.
For example, getting a caste certificate β the necessary proof of eligibility for benefits β is difficult when many community members hold barely any government identification of any kind. With NGO intervention, this number has swollen into the 30s β but, workers say, it has been a struggle. Most of the time, these people do not come. An earlier DNT commission, responsible for the report, issued a slew of suggestions for government, centring on the recommendation to address the needs of DNTs separately from other disadvantaged social groups.
