When a photograph of women bundled into a police van after a raid on a brothel becomes the visual centrepiece of a book cover, it tells you something powerful about what lies inside: Immoral Traffic, the new, deeply reported book by Vibhuti Ramachandran, is not just another academic study but a searing investigation into how India’s anti-prostitution laws and anti-trafficking regimes shape the lived realities of women caught in their orbit. Here is a book that is already sparking debate about the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA), rescue operations, shelter homes, and what protection actually looks like in practice — all crucial keywords that lie at the heart of the nation’s ongoing struggle with trafficking, vyāpār (trade), law enforcement and women’s agency.
Ramachandran’s Immoral Traffic is based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi and Mumbai that follows women’s encounters with the law from the moment of a police raid through courtroom testimony and finally to the so-called protective homes where many end up. What emerges is a portrait not of simple “rescue and rehabilitation,” but of a complex governance regime in which NGOs, police, courts and the state combine to produce what the author calls an “excess of legality” — layers of law and procedure that often undermine the very dignity and autonomy they claim to defend.
What sets Immoral Traffic apart from sensationalist reporting or policy briefs is its refusal to take for granted the easy binaries that dominate so much public discussion: trafficked vs. voluntary worker, victim vs. criminal, rescue vs. punishment. Ramachandran shows how police-NGO “raid-and-rescue” operations often treat all women present as interchangeable, obliterating distinctions between consensual sex work and coercion under duress. That moment when women are swept up — bachāyā gayā (rescued) in official terminology — becomes the opening move in a sequence of legal and social exclusions that can lead straight to confinement, stigma, or worse.
In courtrooms, as the book documents, women’s own voices are often sidelined. Chapters with titles like “These Girls Never Give Statements” reveal that prosecutions under the ITPA rarely hinge on testimony from the women themselves; instead, convictions depend on inferences drawn from bodies, mannerisms and police-generated evidence, collapsing morality and legality into a single frame that is deeply gendered and moralising. The law, critics argue, makes women into objects of speculation rather than subjects with agency. The Leaflet
This matters because India’s legal framework on prostitution — grounded in the 1956 Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act and its later amendments — has long blurred the lines between criminal law and moral judgement. Under current interpretations, activities surrounding organised prostitution are illegal, while consensual sex work occupies a grey zone that lacks basic labour protections enjoyed by other professions. Ramachandran situates her critique within broader debates about how anti-trafficking interventions, often shaped by donor-funded NGOs and international norms, can reproduce paternalism under the banner of rakṣā (protection).
The cultural context is crucial here. In Indian society, where issues of izzat (honour) and parivār (family reputation) exert powerful forces on women’s lives, interventions framed as rescuing women from immorality often reinforce existing stigmas. Even NGOs with the best of intentions can become agents of a punitive governance model that views sex work as inherently dehumanising, ignoring the structural forces of poverty, caste discrimination and migration that shape women’s choices.
Ramachandran’s book also joins a growing chorus of voices calling for a rethinking of anti-trafficking strategies. Rather than measuring success by the number of raids or convictions, scholars and activists urge a shift towards models that recognise sex workers as workers with rights — echoing the work of organisations like the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee in Kolkata, which fights for sex workers’ legal recognition and labour rights.
Immoral Traffic does not offer simple answers, but its strength lies in illuminating the tangled realities of women whose lives are governed by laws they did not write but must navigate every day. It challenges readers to look beyond headlines about “rescues” to ask: what real freedom looks like, and who gets to define it in a society grappling with the legacy of legal moralism and the politics of rescue. In doing so, the book opens up a space for more humane policies that centre dignity, choice and justice — not just in India, but wherever the governance of sex work and trafficking remain contentious.
Spicy Auntie here, stirring her tea and rolling her eyes at the word rescue — again. Every time I hear it in the context of sex work in India, I know something messy, moralistic, and deeply patronising is about to follow. That’s why Immoral Traffic hit me right between the eyebrows. Not because it’s “shocking” — Auntie has seen too much for shock — but because it calmly, meticulously exposes what so many prefer not to see: how saving women has become a whole industry that often hurts the very people it claims to protect.
Let’s be honest. In India, prostitution governance is not really about safety. It’s about izzat (honour), optics, and the state’s eternal obsession with disciplining women’s bodies. Raids make for good headlines. NGO press releases sparkle with words like rehabilitation and empowerment. Police photos show women herded into vans, faces hidden, dignity already stripped. And everyone pats themselves on the back. Job done, right? Wrong.
What Immoral Traffic lays bare is the afterlife of rescue — the long, claustrophobic limbo of shelter homes, courtrooms, and paperwork where women are no longer criminals, but not quite free either. They are “victims,” which sounds nicer until you realise victimhood comes with curfews, confinement, silence, and compulsory gratitude. You were saved, dear. Why are you complaining?
Auntie finds this obsession with rescuing women without listening to them both insulting and dangerous. Many women know exactly why they are in sex work. Poverty, migration, caste barriers, abusive homes — these are not mysteries. Treating adult women as incapable of consent because their choices make society uncomfortable is not feminism; it’s control wrapped in a sari of good intentions.
And don’t get me started on the NGOs. Some do essential work, yes. Others have turned moral panic into a funding model. The louder the language of purity and protection, the less space there is for nuance, labour rights, or — heaven forbid — women saying, “This is my job. Make it safer.”
India loves a nari raksha (women’s protection) narrative, but hates women who speak for themselves. Courts talk about bodies, not voices. Laws talk about morality, not survival. Everyone talks about trafficking, but few talk about wages, housing, healthcare, or choice.
So here’s Auntie’s unsolicited advice: stop rescuing women as if they’re drowning when they’re actually navigating a storm you helped create. Start asking what justice looks like when women are treated as adults, not broken dolls. Until then, every raid is just another performance — and women keep paying the price backstage.