We identified the need for Me and My World first when sex workers took on the responsibility of implementing the State Government's HIV prevention programme. We did the work. The outreach, the education, the day-to-day labour of assisting people the health system could not reach — was up to us. All without recognition, and without our own basic human rights being addressed. We were relied upon as instruments of public health policy and left unprotected as people. That experience is what brought us together.

We formed MMW in 2017 as an organisation to engage with power structures at the state and bi-state level. We began by strengthening sex worker leadership through knowledge dissemination and capacity building. The point was to build the knowledge, skill, and standing to speak and be heard by those with structural power.

We chose Women's Initiatives (WINS), an allied NGO in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, as our closest partner. WINS had been organising sex workers, migrant women, and HIV-positive women in Andhra Pradesh since 1994. WINS has provided ongoing training and support to MMW members on self-awareness, interpersonal relationships, violence mitigation, parenting, and savings. MMW members have benefitted from a special focus on the laws and treaties that govern our lives: India's Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA), the Universal Periodic Review, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Public discourse often claims to listen to sex workers. But in times of crisis, under police action, or when help is actually sought, that support disappears. Stigma, discrimination, and criminalisation deny sex workers dignity and rights. MMW uses every medium available to us to sensitise the public and the police to treat sex workers with dignity. We respond to changing laws and shifting public opinion by building awareness, documenting violations, and asserting our rights.

The heart of the problem is the “rescue” framework. Under the ITPA, increased focus on law enforcement conflates trafficking with voluntary sex work — treating a woman who chose this work and a woman who was forced into it as though they were the same person, with the same needs, and owed the same remedy. They are not the same. That conflation does not protect us. It puts consenting adults at greater risk: raided, detained, held in protective homes we never asked to enter, and separated from our families and our income in the name of saving us. MMW counters this by advocating for decriminalisation and for rights-based approaches that begin with what voluntary sex workers actually need.

Our efforts, in concert with those of sex worker activists across the country, culminated in two judgments from India's Supreme Court: Budhadev Karmaskar (2022) and Prajwala (2026). Both affirmed that Indian law does not criminalise sex work, and that the police and the judiciary must respect the agency of sex workers rather than attempt to forcibly “rescue” or “rehabilitate” them.