The Industry Of Modern Sex In India

“He took the diamonds back,” Chandini told me, “The last time I visited him, he told me to give them to him so he could keep them safe while we were out and about, but then he just “forgot to return them” and broke up with me.”

She pulled out a box of cigarettes from the Louis Vuitton handbag that lay on the floor of her plush, glitter-themed apartment in Delhi. She offered me a cigarette before using the miniature blowtorch on her mantle to light her own.

“I’ll get him back, at least for six months so I can sort out my financial situation,” she said, flicking ash into a pink crystal bowl, “But I don’t think I will ever get those diamonds back, you know? It’s such a shame, those diamonds were vital to my financial security.”

 
Chandini, 36, is a sugar-baby, though she prefers the term “professional girlfriend”. For the past year she has been seeing a wealthy businessman in Chennai. She visits him each month, does everything a girlfriend would do, they speak every day, he dotes on her and he buys her everything she needs.

Transactional relationships, or sugar dating, is increasing in popularity all over the world. Sugar dating refers to a phenomenon wherein relationships between the two parties are codified around what they can both offer to one another — usually financial security on the part of the man and an unspoken sexual agreement on part of the woman. According to SeekingArrangements, the premier dating app for transactional relationships, India, at 3,38,000, has the maximum number of sugar daddies in Asia. The founder of the app, Brandon Wade, is a somewhat notorious man who insists that every relationship in the world is transactional, at least in his version of things, that transaction is outright and benefits both parties. He touts the honesty of these arrangements as the reason why they are superior to traditional relationships, he augurs that the upward mobility this enables for the women, in terms of steady incomes, agency and professional contacts, is what makes these arrangements superior to traditional sex work. However, on the app, the men seem to resent this honesty. 

“These women are not interested in anything but the money,” Sid1345 wrote to me in my Direct Messages on Seeking Arrangements, “Even before you have had any other discussion, they want to talk about allowances and wishlists. We will give, but this aggressive and open discussion of money is a turn off. It’s a relationship first, now it has just become a meat market."

Chandini told me this attitude towards money is common, the men do not want to feel like the women are only interested in them for the money and they expect the upkeep of the covenant of silence around it. There is an innocence they wish to project onto the women, a modern rendition of needing to feel like you are rescuing the girl from a life of sexual debasement. The men don’t wish to discuss the money or they want to get it out of the way as soon as possible. Sagar, the man who is Chandini’s sugar-daddy, insists that she avoid bringing up the transactional elements of their relationship as much as possible because it hurts him. 

“In our case, there is no monthly payment as such,” she explained to me, “He pays for all my expenses directly, he buys all my groceries and he sends me many presents, but he never gives me cash directly. That way he gets more control over me, he gets to check what I am doing and where I am really spending my money. In that way, it really is a real relationship.”

This form of monetary control, sometimes so reminiscent of marriage in India, is not uncommon in the industry. The expectation on part of the men that the women put on the illusion of a “real” relationship is extremely high, and in that they reserve the right to dictate the behaviours that are expected in exchange for the provisions they make. Often, the expectations are of beauty, a well-maintained figure, soft-heartedness, arm-candy, glorious, overstated femininity, a certain level of education, fluency at English and class. Unspoken penalties are imposed upon the women when they fail to meet expectations, for instance, when Chandini was unable to visit one month, suddenly Sagar began to face business losses which caused him to buy fewer things for her. Once she visited again, the losses seemed to disappear. Money is at the heart of the power-dynamic but the silence around it is an expectation dressed up as class. 

Madhu, 22, a sugar-baby and professional dominatrix told me about her experiences with men and money in the marketplace. 

“Rich men will not go for you if you seem desperate for money,” she explained to me, “You have to create a persona, on Instagram especially, they should see you with designer labels, speaking English and living a very glamorous life. If you seem desperate for them, they’ll think you are just a gold-digger or a prostitute. They shouldn’t think that you need their money.”

The terms sex-work and prostitution are looked down upon within the ranks of sugar-babies. Instead, most women who engage within these demographics view this form of employment as empowerment for themselves and sex-work as something completely different, something inherently demeaning. There is legal precedent for sugar dating to not be considered prostitution since prostitution as it is defined in the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act of 1958 necessitates an element of exploitation for an act of transactional sex to be considered unlawful, and even then the law rarely targets the women. 

“The purpose of the law is to safeguard women from exploitation,” explained Sumit Chander, a lawyer who practises in the Supreme Court and runs a law-firm in Delhi, “The question of protection arises in traditional prostitution wherein you have a brothel and more often than not the women engaged in this work are doing it against their will and for the commercial benefit of someone else. The law has not kept up with the changes in the industry but in implementation it has also abandoned those it was meant to protect. On ground, prostitutes are not protected, they are harassed. On ground, the possibility of empowered prostitution may not even exist.”

The legality of sugar dating as it exists today, primarily in the upper echelons of English-speaking, urban society is ambiguous. While there is little precedent that the women will be persecuted, there is little recourse available to them should something untoward happen as well. While the Supreme Court ruled in May 2022 that sex work is a profession and as such entitled to the criminal protections extended to any professional under the law, the fact that the women in the sugar industry seek to distance themselves from sex work has created a chasm of distance between traditional sex-work and transactional relationships, effectively eradicating the possibility of the expansion of the term or a united, more intersectional front. It also leaves the sugar babies themselves unprotected by the law because they refuse to align themselves with sex-work, and even if they did, the lack of exploitation may mean they do not qualify. 

“I am not a sex-worker,” Madhu explained to me, “I have choice, sex-workers have to go with anyone, I choose my clients carefully depending on my preference, I know the value of my time and I am a goddess that they are lucky to even touch. Prostitutes are those women who lie around in brothels, they don’t even know who is coming to use them and all, that’s not me, I am a professional.”

Unlike Chandini, Madhu doesn’t come from a particularly privileged, educated or even a middle-class background. She was born to conservative parents who were struggling financially and she resolved, at a very young age, that she would break the cycle of poverty and transcend class. She taught herself to speak in English, she took grooming classes and she emancipated herself from her family as soon as she was able to do so. 

“With an office job, I would never be able to do this, I wouldn’t be able to be so free,” Madhu explained to me, “At my age I could never have made this much money any other way, nor could I have this lifestyle, I travel to luxury hotels and I never have to wake up early, after this I can never go back to an office job.”

This is a sentiment echoed by the men who have these relationships as well, from the men it comes off as more accusatory. Manpreet, 41, is a businessman from Pune, who has a rotation of sugar-babies whom he dates for a period of six months to a year at a time. 

“These girls don’t want to work,” he wrote to me, “Basically, they want the best of both worlds, they want the glamour of having a high-paying job without the effort of doing the job, they want to do sex-work but they want to pretend there’s some grey area here because they are influenced by the West but ultimately, they also know, they cannot keep this up forever, so the smart ones get a degree and the smarter ones look for a husband.”

On the face of it, it does seem that this is an industry of transients, but most women have different and concrete goals for their time here. For Chandini, the goal is to build up as much wealth as possible from this relationship, she keeps careful account of the value of the products, designer handbags, jewellery and presents she receives. She barely uses them because she knows someday she will sell these products to build a nest-egg for herself. This is why the diamonds were so important. On his part, Sagar seems aware of his role as an asset-builder in this relationship and adept at using that position to elicit desirable behaviour, while still pretending that money is too distasteful a subject to warrant discussion. Even when he presented her with the diamonds, he kept the certificates of authenticity, Chandini had the stones independently evaluated, but was unable to sell them because he insisted she wear them at all times for his pleasure. 

“He probably wanted me to wear them to make sure I don’t sell them,” she said of the stones, “I cannot believe I was outsmarted by this man, I feel like a fool, he probably passes the same diamonds from woman-to-woman. Still, I have to try to get them back, at my age finding a second guy like him is very unlikely."

Age does seem like a relevant factor in the industry. While the men profess to preferring younger women because they have fewer entanglements, easier demands and their entire lives ahead of them, the women admit to lying about their ages in worry that their earnings will be impacted as they get older. 

“Right now I am 22 so it doesn’t matter, but eventually it will matter,” Madhu told me, “That’s why I insist of payments in cash and not presents, shoes are good, but I need a long-term plan, I want to make investments and buy real-estate so that my future is secure. In the end, I also want to get married, have a stress-free life, and I am always looking for one of these men to be that one guy who can be part of my retirement plan.”

It is hard to ignore the traditional view of freedom, beauty, women’s roles in society and sexist stereotypes that permeate the industry. Despite the message of empowerment many of the women seek to espouse, they often find themselves governing their behaviour in accordance with social norms to win the favour of the men who finance them. They explain to me that it’s important to seem polished but not intelligent, men feel safer with emotional women. It is important to pretend that they are in monogamous relationships with these men, a condition almost ubiquitous in the arrangements. It is important to dress feminine, to take care of your hair and nails, to put on an act of girlish simplicity because that is what men want. Even when they pay you and even if they are in the more legally compromised position, they wish to declaw you just enough to not have to fear you. On the one hand, the women  say that these conditions they uphold, like any other job, are just the skills that make them better at it than other people, and there is truth to that, but the social-implications of their jobs and the general moral narrative around sex work does seem to impact the self-worth and mental health of the women involved. 

“Look, the unspoken truth is that sometimes I feel really bad that I have multiple advanced degrees but still, this is what I do for money,” Chandini told me, “When I hear of other women doing it, I feel supportive, but when I think of myself doing it, I feel a bit sickened. I know we are not technically sex-workers, but aren’t we, in a way? And if we are, is it really so bad?”

At the heart of these relationships there is a form of exploitation that appears to continue, and it not just the control of women through financial means by agents of the patriarchy into conformity, it is also how the social attitude towards sex work as either exploitation or moral degeneracy, is internalised even by women in the field who recognise and demand the right to sexual and professional freedom. Even women who seem to have transcended this control and established autonomy are not free from a dose of self-loathing because they cannot exist in an ideological vacuum, and society treats the “sex-worker” as Martyr or sinner, but neither, are human. You’re a woeful lament or a cautionary tale and it is bound to get under the skin of anyone. 

“The truth is that this is a very difficult job,” Madhu told me, “Somedays I feel horrible about myself, about how men see me, how society judges me, how hard it is for me to date for myself and especially about the fact that I have become so lazy about doing any other work that this has now become my only option. I have to hustle all the time. I have to constantly project this larger-than-life image but some days I feel so shit I cannot do it.”

That does not mean there is no potential for empowerment in transactional relationships or modern sex-work, it exists in hues and waves, for both Chandini and Madhu as well. It carries ethical dilemmas as does any profession, if you really want to look at it that way. However, for the most part, it does seem that within Indian society as it exists today, the structures of patriarchal control, the conservative attitudes towards sex work and the class divide remain entrenched in gender-relations even if they are undertaken in the guise of honest and upfront transactions. In my research, I only came across two women who seem to have been able to enjoy an occasional transaction without being mired in the conditions of society and their success seems contingent on privilege. They only had fun for the money and that’s usually only possible when you don’t really need the money. 

Honey, 24, and Kitty, 23, were college students when they first got on Seeking Arrangements. As a couple in a long-term relationship, they wanted to have an adventure as occasional sex-workers/sugar babies. They only had one such encounter. 

“It was just really positive and fun,” Kitty told me, “We chose the guy very carefully and we ensured that we chose a guy we would have slept with even if there was no money involved. We met at a hotel, he was very polite and we discussed consent and aftercare because we just really wanted to make sure everyone has a positive experience.”

While it was heartening to hear a judgement-free discussion of sugar dating as an equal transaction between all parties, it was impossible to ignore the backgrounds of the people involved.

“We do acknowledge that this only possible for us because of our privilege,” Honey clarified, “Our experience is not representative of the majority of this industry, but for any Indian woman, even us, to be able to confidently and happily monetise her sexuality without being judged or judging herself is a win. Even if we did it only for the thrill of adventure.”

It’s reassuring that you can afford dignity in thrill but as the profession goes the dignity of respectable livelihood still seems a little ways away, especially because the clients who are primarily men refuse to respect the women as they would any other professionals. They still insist on paying in conditional diamonds.
Chandini swept up the specks of dust and ash from her pristine floors as she continued to talk to me. She cleans constantly. 

“Are you judging me?” She asked, giggling through her teeth as I shook my head, “I am sure you are wondering why this woman who is so educated is running after diamonds a man gave to her.

It’s not unexpected, until such a time that the systems governing the financial entrapment of women are dismantled from within, marriage or sex-work, diamonds will have to remain a girl’s best friend.

…

Note: All names with the exception of Sumit Chander have been changed upon request.