Ruchira Gupta - Interview with Holly Morris, Adventure Divas

Ruchira Gupta v/o:
mumbai’s nightlife is another unique madness.I’m going to meet self-proclaimed muckraker  Ruchira Gupta in the infamous red light district - a million miles from bollywood.. in 1998, i saw ruchira’s award winning film  “selling of innocents” which is an expose  of the flesh trade. she made the film after she visited himalayan villages and noticed they were emptied of women between the ages of 15 and 45.
 

Ruchira started a center called apne aap, which means “on our own” in hindi. with that she’s crossed the line from journalist to activist.
 

Ruchira Gupta:
as a journalist, i’ve covered war, famine, riots, and i’ve always moved on to the next story. but when i began to work on this documentary of sex trafficking, I just couldn’t move on. i was so outraged about what was happening inside the brothels, i’d never seen this level of exploitation and i felt that, you know, nobody deserved to go through this.they’re locked up in this small rooms. they are raped repeatedly until their spirits are completely broken.  and then they have to service about 20 to 25 clients a day. - it’s just outrageous.
 

Holly Morris v/o:
serekha is a member of apne aap, grew up in a village and was sold into prostitution at 15. she and her daughter shanti are taking us to their home in the brothel. ruchira tells me 2 things: stick close, and do not film the clients.
 

Those in the brothels are the last link in a  institutionalized foodchain. a pipeline is supplied, from villages to cities, by traffickers, boyfriends who turn into pimps, and sometimes, impoverished parents who sell off their daughters to support the rest of the family. ruchira is trying to change mindset that allows little girls to become the first resource in poverty.
 

Sereka:
My house!
 

Holly Morris:
Your house.
 

Sereka:
Bedroom, kitchen, ac…
 

Holly Morris:
Are these apartments or…?
 

Ruchira Gupta:
again beds and, everybody sleeps at different times.
 

Holly Morris:
So this is part of the brothel?
 

Ruchira Gupta:

yes.
 

Ruchira Gupta:
It’s like a hole in the wall, as you can see, there’s no window, there is no ventilation, there is no light. and yet this is what they live in, this is all that they have for 8 hours.  and after 8 hours they have to give it up to the next person. they are servicing their clients in the bed and the children are playing on the floor at the same time.  in the room, there’s no other space. they cook, they clean, they eat, they service their clients, they look after their children all in that same space of 4 feet by 4 feet.
 

The police try extort money from them.These girls also have to offer free sex, they have to offer very young girls.  sometimes the policemen say we don’t want sex with you, we want you to get us a young girl. So they have to give one of their daughters or some young girl.
 

Holly Morris v/o:
Ruchira and the women of the district have been  making change against pretty devastating odds.
 

Holly Morris:
the center is an outgrowth of your film?
 

Ruchira Gupta:
it is, it is in response to my film, because the women that i worked with while making the film are the women who pushed me into starting this. because they said that you will come, make the film, and go away. how will our lives change?
 

so, this is our office, and the girls come in here and we register them. one of the biggest things that we’ve done is that we’ve launched a membership drive by trying to restore their sense of identity, they had no i.d., they were not considered citizens of india, they were not given access to health care, but with this id card now they belong to an organization. they have a sense of who they are.Inside this room we have vocational training classes. a teacher comes and teaches them how to read and write and count.
 

Most of our women don’t have a home. what they do is rent a bed for 8 hours everyday. and then they’re thrown out. so then they try to sleep on the sidewalk. if they don’t get space on the sidewalk, if it’s too hot, too crowded, whatever, they just wander around the streets. And it is so nice to walk in and just see the women sleeping peacefully; they’re not scared, nobody is harassing them. they can take a shower when they wake up, a cup of tea, and that goes a long way toward just restoring dignity in their lives.
 

Most of the women in apne aap are hiv positive, one of my problems is that what are we are going to do to help them, but the big issue is what’s going to happen to their children. these children could literally be growing up on the streets when the mothers die. the boys will become parts of gangs, and the girls will end up becoming prostitutes. and we want to get the girls placed in boarding schools, the boys given some vocational classes.
 

We try to build self-esteem through music and dance, and that goes a long way, but then we come to a dead end at one point when the girls turn 13 or 14, just at puberty, because we know that the brothel madams are going to put them into prostitution.

The little girl in the green dress, lasi, she isn’t in the business just yet, she was somehow protected because the brothel madam liked her a lot and then she thought she could get more out of her when she grew older  she was kind of skinny. and i was telling the madam that she wants to be a doctor, let her stay and study on for another year or two years. i was literally trying to buy time, so i had to  sit and negotiate and negotiate and negotiate and finally the madam has agreed to give us one more year.What we want to do is actually, uh, eradicate sex trafficking and the exploitation inside prostitution.
 

Holly Morris:
what’s the good news?
 

Ruchira Gupta:
The good news is the women are willing to fight.  six years ago they were so intimidated and they were so scared, they were not willing to even talk to each other, they did not let outsiders in.They’re no longer, timid, disempowered women.  if you work with people and tell them about their rights they’re willing to stand up and fight.
 

Holly Morris:
Has your spirit changed since you’ve sort of moved from journalist to activist?
 

Ruchira Gupta:
Yes, because as a journalist you go so far and then you back off, you know, you don’t want the responsibility of changing the world. but as an activist you go, you push, and you push and you push ‘til you feel that you actually got a paradigm shift.
 

Holly Morris:
A lot of the women i’ve met - they may be artists, they may be singers, they may be whatever, but they’re also committed to a grassroots activism.
 

Ruchira Gupta:
I think that comes from the freedom struggle…and it continued in all kinds of ways, social work, or commitment to changing things, some people have the luxury to be activists, and other people don’t. so the people who have the luxury to be activists, it’s almost like an additional responsibility, that you do it.
 

Holly Morris v/o:
the village girls sold into sex slavery are victims - which in a way, they are - but with support and voice they aren’t powerless.And ruchira would never call herself a warrior, but she is one.It’s strange when the brightest light comes from the darkest places.Sex trafficking happens all over the world, and it’s a flipside to india’s light and optimism.
Somehow it all lives together here.