‘I FELT MORE UNSAFE ON THE STREETS THAN IN THE BARS’

When the ban on dance bars was announced, Pooja was 20 and a rising star. The ban felt like the end of all her big city dreams, and in a sense, it was. Unable to find other work, the high school dropout headed back home to her village near Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. For a few years, she helped her father in the fields. But the earnings from the crops weren’t enough to support the family and Pooja felt like a fish out of water living the life of a village girl again.

The only way out, she decided, was to return to the city and try her luck again. By this time, most dance bars had morphed into orchestra bars and she found work as a singer, but she never again earned as she used to.

“There were issues within the dance bars, but nothing we couldn’t handle,” she adds. “When customers tried to touch us and get close to us, we could say no. And in the bars, no meant no. We could have unruly customers thrown out. I have felt more unsafe on the street.”

Which brings her to what she considers a real issue. “Once we leave the bar, we are on our own. No one bothers with us. We aren’t even given transportation home. Why didn’t the government do something for us there?” she asks.

An even bigger problem, however, is the years of income she has lost, she says. “From 2006 to now, I have earned about one-third of what I used to earn as a bar dancer. Tell the government that this is my biggest problem,” she says. “Can they help with that?”