After farmer's suicide deaths in Maharashtra's rural areas, the next development in India's relentless race to open up economy through consumerism is the seemingly mass movement of prostitution in 'poor' strata of educated urban families.

Recent media reports point to increased participation in prostitution from middle class families. Often, the family is complicit, with the family member contributing to the monthly family budget.

Now that social permissiveness has traveled to Maharashtra, where in some urban areas, the pickings are much higher and the pressure to lead a 'subsistence level' consumerism-oriented life-style much more compelling, economic factors combine with fast dis-integrating moral values boosted by Bollywood's idolizing of the western mores, is converting a conservative India into a virtual liberal brothel, where women's honour and chastity is shamelessly compromised without much ado.

The case of arrest of a MD gynecologist, his wife and 6 girls, on charges of prostitution racket in Mumbai suburb of Dehisar, shows up as a classical route, that the whole gamut of prostitution has found fertile ground to flourish. The doctor, at one point, himself calling up police to report and squeal on one such racket, allegedly found it convenient to join the trade to go for easier pickings. Young school and college going girls, under medical tutelage, could feel safe from any medical complications that might hinder taking up the new profession; once they have crossed the moral and social barriers to adopt a seemingly 'permissive' life-style that in effect is forced on them with new 'economic progress' syndrome. Rampant unemployment in college age generation coupled with ever-increasing cost of living, makes compulsion out of necessity.

While at one end, Left-liberals are in the fore-front calling for legalizing of prostitution, as a fundamental right to earn a living, the enormous uprooting of family life that had been the bed-rock of Indian ethos for millenniums, is hardly even being noted.

Though India, under Manmohanomics is rushing to achieve 8% annual growth, the wealth creation is strictly confined to a small percentage at the top, while the masses are paying the real cost of liberalization and opening to the West, with complete disruption of their moral and ethical value systems. Crimes are a short distance from there on.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi bear heavy burden on their heads to see that economic boom does not bring in a social and ethical bust.

All measures, including and especially housing costs, employment opportunities, and grass root penetration of liberalization benefits, should be rigorously pursued to keep India, not succumbing to the Western standards of decadent moral values that is passed off as 'progress'.

Ghulam Muhammed lives in Mumbai and can be reached at ghulam_muhammed2ATyahoo.co.in

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