January 2000

We, who belong to the middle class, cannot even imagine how women from the subaltern ranks, who are socially and economically uprooted, provide subsistence for themselves and their children. Sewing clothes, grinding spices, doing a bit of embroidery, making paper packets — earnings from such informal work are meagre, irregular, full of risks and gendered. For poor women who find only 2-3 days work per week, the barriers between prostitution and other kinds of work are often thin. We do not want to know these essential truths, we do not wish to be made to feel responsible either.