the beginning

Odanadi’s founding duo, Stanly KV and Parashuram ML (fondly referred together as ‘Stanly Parashu’), launched a relentless campaign in 1990-91 to curb and expose the flesh trade.  A chance encounter with a sex worker who accused the two then-journalists of hypocrisy when dealing with people of their kind, she threw them the challenge of doing something to improve the lives of women like her.

In the mid-80s, when Stanly and Parashu were working for the governmentt as district coordinators of the Total Literacy Project. They also did some journalism work on the side. For one story they wanted to speak to the lowest strata of society - Dalits, untouchables etc. Speaking with a bullock cart owner one day, a woman approached, wishing to talk. The small crowd that had gathered urged Stanly and Parashuram not to talk to her. Although the people in the crowd were themselves considered outcasts of the society, they regarded this woman as worse than them - she was a prostitute. She challenged Stanly and Parashuram for having come to talk to them, but then going back to their comfortable lives. She asked them what they planned to do after getting a good story, telling them that they were just like all the others: in actual fact, unconcerned with the lives of the poor and destitute.

Moved by this challenge, Stanly and Parashu pledged to do their best to help that part of the society that was not deemed human: the prostituted. Stanly Parashu, along with a handful of friends, chose Mysore to spearhead a full-blooded struggle against the harsh socio-economic and cultural forces affecting these women.

Prior to starting Odanadi, Stanly-Parashu undertook a ten-month pilot study ("Bodies For A Meal") of the socio-economic conditions of prostituted women and their children in Mysore district. Odanadi Seva Samsthe emerged as a registered trust in 1992 to be the 'Odanadi' of this ravaged group of the society.

Since then, Odanadi Seva Samsthe's pioneering efforts to empower and rehabilitate these sexually-exploited women and children and the organisation's relentless campaign to expose and curb flesh trade has spread state-wide. Stanly and Parashu have helped Odanadi emerge as a leading and powerful voice, advocating the cause of prostituted women in India.