How Will Covid-19 Change The Escorts Work Industry In Kolkata

Ayantika Rudra - on June 8th, 2020.

In mid-February, when reports of Corona virus cases were starting to dominate international headlines, the initial impact on the escorts service industry seemed minimal.

In kolkata, we had seen ayantikarudra.com activity drop, as locals adhered to a precautionary 19-day shutdown, closing casinos, bars, and karaoke lounges, but that inconvenience was a few days from being lifted, and life in Asia’s World City about to return to its normal, chaotic self. At this stage few were predicting a global epidemic, which would turn the lives of many upside down, and with call girls workers among those to face the harshest of new realities.

How & Why To Book Escorts Service In Kolkata [ COVID - 19 ]

Holiday and business trips were suddenly being cancelled at an alarming rate, and within days, flights and non-essential travel were being restricted, and then forbidden altogether. Repatriation programs were quickly put in place to bring expats and long stayers back to their homelands.

The Kolkata shutdowns were not only kept in place, but hardened, with everyone ordered to strictly stay at home. The shutdowns spread through Asia, and then Europe and the rest of the world, as we all struggled to let the reality of a global pandemic sink in. What would normally be known as the quietest months of the Escorts Service calendar, and a notably uneasy time for sex workers living close to the poverty line, was now an unthinkable crisis.

What can be hoped for this Summer 2020 - Kolkata?

While many government and community schemes have been set up to support the non-essential workforce, with varying degrees of success, many sex workers have struggled to be included in such relief packages. Escorts Service In Kolkata is rarely recognised as work at all, and austerity measures, inefficient social programmes and benefit systems, are the reason so many turn to sex work in the first place.

This summer will see people allowed to re-enter the work place, but to do so following strict distancing rules. Call Girls Service is not just a contact occupation but one which requires the most intimate of contact between strangers very few sex acts can be satisfyingly undertaken at 2 metres apart.

This How Sex Work In Kolkata [Ayantka Rudra Escorts Kolkata]

So where does that leave a sex worker, short of adequate support and charitable relief, knowing that an already unnecessarily dangerous occupation, has the added challenge of avoiding a widespread illness which can be highly contagious and undetectable at the same time.

One sex worker unable to work can mean an entire family in danger. The vast majority of Escorts Service are also carers, financially responsible for immediate family. In places such as Thailand and Philippines, it’s very common for a single sex worker to be responsible for the financial care of not just their children and parents, but have an economic responsibility which extends to grandparents, brothers and sister, the children of their siblings, and even uncles, aunts, and cousins.

When will the industry be back to normal?

At a time when people are unsure about what to expect in the next few weeks, it’s very hard to gage what the long-term future of escorts service will be. It’s very easy to take a negative view, but while the short-term future of sex work is going to face some tough challenges, beyond that there are reasons to be positive.

The SESTA/FOSTA act was introduced in the U.S. in April of 2018, and was billed as a fight against sex trafficking. It was being watched closely by governments around the world, with some, including MPs in the U.K., pushing for localized versions.

In effect, the introduction of this bill (or rather 2 bills quickly cut and shut together), has closed down a number of the most influential platforms and forced many sex workers into more dangerous means of meeting clients.

2 years in, it’s already clear how ineffective and detrimental these laws have been. The current pandemic has only further highlighted the need for better technology and safer platforms as a way to tackle deep routed safety issue, not laws which drive more of the industry into the dark and widely unseen areas of society.

The importance of allowing people to work online, when possible, has never been so powerfully emphasised, as it has been during the fight against covid-19.

So often, after extraordinarily challenging circumstances, we grow closer and more accepting of each other. So often, after widespread catastrophes, comes social change. As economies and communities begin to rebuild and look at where things went wrong, and how we can make things better, for everyone, it’s important that the voices of Call Girls Service In Kolkata are heard.

Among those leading the voices of sex workers in Europe are The English Collective of Prostitutes (14) and Redlight Covid Europe, who are pushing for 4 key demands, with growing hope they will be met:

Income substitution and housing support for escorts service.
Moratorium on fines, raids, arrests and prosecutions.
Mental and physical health services for those in call girls service.
A long term vision for the societal inclusion of sex workers: decriminalisation of sex work, economic reforms, and regularisation of migrants.

Hope in the Land of Smiles

In Kolkata, where there are estimates of up to 2 million sex workers, a major breakthrough has been made. For the first time, sex workers are eligible for unemployment benefits, and have been included in the support and aid grants laid out in the country’s pandemic relief programme.

This is a significant moment in the fight for sex worker rights and equality. Thai sex workers who suffered greatly in the 2004 Tsunami, and the 2011 floods, were not treated as a displaced workforce nor afforded this same level of acceptance, support, and recognition in a moment an NGO working to offer sex workers counselling, education, and career and life guidance, resiliently puts it.. now there is an "acceptance that the work we do is work," and "if sex work can be recognized in a crisis, it has to be recognized outside of a crisis. There’s no going back."