For Priti Patkar, social work began not with a predetermined career path, but with a question that emerged from witnessing the lives of children growing up in Mumbai’s red-light areas: how could children born into exploitation be given the opportunity to choose a different future.
Trained as a social worker at Nirmala Niketan and later at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, where she stood first in her specialisation, Priti’s understanding of child protection was shaped by her early exposure to Kamathipura. Her journey eventually led to the founding of Prerana, an organisation focused on protecting women and children from trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation and other forms of violence.
A Defining Encounter With Kamathipura
A visit to Kamathipura in 1986 became a turning point in Priti’s life. As a social-work student, she encountered children growing up amid circumstances where exploitation could continue across generations.
What stayed with her was three generations and the youngest of them being a child of women from the same family on the streets and bylanes of Kamathipura, soliciting for customers. The experience made her confront a difficult question: what could be done to ensure that children born into such circumstances were not automatically destined to inherit the same life?
At the time, children’s rights were receiving increasing attention globally, yet Priti saw how children in places like Kamathipura remained largely invisible while many of their basic rights were being violated.
That experience became part of the foundation for Prerana, which she began with her husband, Dr. Pravin Patkar, with support and guidance from Mrs. Farida Lambay and Dr. Hazel D’Lima.
From Rescue To Prevention
Priti’s early experiences also changed how she understood social intervention. She realised that protecting children could not simply mean removing them from immediate danger.
Children needed safe spaces, education, healthcare, counselling, family support and pathways towards a different future. This thinking led to the development of Prerana’s Night Care Centre programme, described in the interview as the first initiative of its kind.
The programme provided children born to women in prostitution with a safe place to stay during the night, away from the violence, exploitation and influences of the red-light area. But the intervention went beyond shelter. Children were supported with education, healthcare, nutrition and psychosocial care.
Prerana also worked with their mothers. The intention was not to separate mothers and children, but to protect children while recognising the importance of their relationships with their families.
For Priti, that distinction remains central. The goal was never to decide what a child should become. It was to create the conditions in which a child could eventually decide for themselves.
Challenging Stigma And Intergenerational Trafficking
The work was not without resistance. Priti recalls that there was widespread stigma surrounding children born to women in prostitution, including the assumption that they would inevitably enter the same trade as their mothers.
Prerana had to challenge both the circumstances surrounding these children and the assumptions society had made about their futures.
The organisation also encountered resistance from people benefiting from the sex trade, particularly when children were supported in making choices that could take them away from exploitation. Priti emphasises that rescue alone cannot protect a child from being trafficked again. Without safe environments, education, family and community support, rehabilitation and continued services, children can remain vulnerable to re-trafficking.
Its work with women similarly extended beyond immediate assistance. Prerana has supported access to alternative rehabilitation and livelihood opportunities, social-security entitlements, identity and protection documents, and government schemes and services.
The broader aim has been to strengthen people’s ability to make informed choices and become more independent.
Building Trust, Sharing Learning
For Priti, meaningful social change requires patience. Communities cannot simply be approached with an outside solution and expected to participate immediately. Trust has to be built over time.
Even in the early years, convincing mothers to send their children to Prerana’s Night Care Centres required demonstrating that the organisation was not trying to separate them from their children. It was creating a safe environment where children could be protected while their mothers worked.
Over time, Priti’s work also reinforced her belief that people closest to a problem must be part of its solution. Mothers, children and communities have shaped Prerana’s learning, while collaboration with government agencies, police, schools and other civil-society organisations has helped extend that learning.
She believes social change cannot belong to one organisation alone. Interventions need to be shared, documented and adapted so that successful approaches can reach more people.
Measuring Success Through Choices
For Priti, the success of an intervention cannot be reduced to the number of children reached.
Prerana looks at whether children remain safe, connected to education and supported in their health and psychosocial needs. It also follows individual journeys, including educational progress and barriers that can lead to children dropping out of school.
But there is another measure that matters deeply to her: whether a person’s choices have expanded.
The Night Care Centre, which has benefited thousands of children over the years, represents this philosophy. Some children have gone on to pursue higher education, find employment and build lives different from what society once assumed would be their destiny.
For Priti, that is the larger purpose of child protection. It is not simply about removing a child from a dangerous situation. It is about creating safety, support and opportunities so that the child can imagine and choose a future beyond the circumstances into which they were born.
The Logical Indian Perspective
Priti Patkar’s journey began with witnessing an uncomfortable reality in Kamathipura and asking what could be done differently. Her work with Prerana has since focused on a principle that runs through her approach to child protection: rescue can be only the beginning.
From creating safe spaces at night to supporting education, healthcare, rehabilitation and family relationships, the focus has remained on disrupting intergenerational exploitation without taking away a child’s agency.
Her experience also shows why lasting social change requires more than individual interventions. It demands trust, community participation, institutional collaboration and a willingness to learn from the people closest to the problem.
At the heart of Priti’s work is a simple idea: every child deserves safety, dignity and the freedom to decide what they want their life to become.
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