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My own experiences in Kolkata's red-light areas, however, have made me question how some of this money has been used, and how successful the Sonagachi Project has actually been. Some of these issues have been raised before -- the Irish Independent recently published a narrative by Tom Vater, whose time in Sonagachi and with the DMSC led him to draw similar conclusions.

With a Yale Downs Fellowship to conduct medical research overseas, I went to India in the summer of 2005 to explore HIV risk perception in the city's red-light areas. I spoke to prostitutes, interviewed buyers of prostituted sex, and toured the insides of brothels. I used a connection with a former prostitute to recruit and interview current prostitutes and buyers of prostituted sex. I tried, where possible, to speak to prostitutes alone, away from pimps or madams. I also spoke with buyers of prostituted sex, whose own opinions are rarely heard because of the difficulty of speaking free of stigma. What I learned in Kolkata suggests to me that a more cautious and judicious approach is necessary in bettering the lives of prostitutes in the red-light district.

Interviewing a buyer of prostituted sex is never easy. It takes time for an interviewer to convince someone that he is not collaborating with pimps, madams, or government officials. And once trust is earned, there is still no guarantee of consistent answers. Asking a question in two different ways could draw out two very different responses. When asked, "How many times do you wear a condom?" many buyers of prostituted sex would claim to always use protection. But these same buyers of prostituted sex, when asked if there were factors that would prevent them from using condoms, would often respond that alcohol made them forget or choose not to wear condoms.

I wondered at first whether I was posing the questions wrong -- but I later learned that the buyers of prostituted sex had no difficulty understanding the questions. They had merely lied at first because they worried I was conspiring to have them arrested. After I gained their trust, we could talk more openly. Trouble in gaining information became a constant theme in my research: many statistics that come from the Sonagachi project haven't been verified or confirmed, and the resulting perceptions might skew philanthropists' understandings of the projects.

In Kolkata, not surprisingly, the price of sex is negotiated between the pimp or madam and the buyer of prostituted sex, not between the prostitute and the buyer of prostituted sex. Prices can range from a few pennies to thousands of dollars for a virgin or adolescent girl, and are determined by the type of sexual act, the time of day, condom use, and the age and ethnicity of the prostitute. Buyers of prostituted sex would frequently pay a few extra rupees to avoid using a condom, and I learned in conversations with them that buyers of prostituted sex, not the prostitutes, were the ones deciding whether or not to use one. It's clear that merely having access to condoms doesn't mean that buyers of prostituted sex will actually use them.