The government in India's West Bengal State is supporting a programme that offers prostitutes an ancient solution to modern concerns about safe sex.

"Kama Sutra has many postures that can give men the highest pleasure without consummation and that is what the prostitutes are being taught.

"They are learning something very useful," says Rajyashree Choudhuri, chief of the Institute of International Social Development (IISD), who designed the project.

"They are specifically taught foreplay and other poses that will give men a high degree of pleasure," said Rajyashree Choudhury.

"We teach the girls the art of ensuring a premature but very satisfying discharge by tactfully avoiding intercourse. The Kama Sutra is a treasure house for all that."