Legal Work Illegal Worker

This book argues that India's current sex work law, the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act of 1956, is unconstitutional after the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling that sex work is a profession protected under Article 21. Selling sex is legal, but everything that makes the work possible (premises, earnings, solicitation) stays criminal. The book calls this paradox out and proposes a fix.Across seven chapters, it traces the law's colonial roots back to the Contagious Diseases Acts, compares four global regulatory models (US criminalisation, Swedish end-demand, German/Dutch licensing, New Zealand decriminalisation), and builds the constitutional case using Puttaswamy, Navtej Johar, and Joseph Shine.Its sharpest contribution: decriminalisation and taxation must be sequenced separately. Germany and the Netherlands show that fast-track taxation creates two-tier outcomes where most workers get pushed underground. The book proposes a 10-year, four-phase taxation plan built for Indian conditions, plus a concrete reform package: an amended ITPA, a new Sex Work (Rights and Protection) Act, and a clear ministerial division of labour.