Global AIDS - India

AIDS in India, Reaction to Stoning Death - July 10, 2003

Dear Meera,

I am ashamed even to say I am shocked. One after another these news come creeping over us and after the initial shock and embarrassment, we are back to complacency. The problem in Kerala, even after the President’s intervention, remains the same.

Children one after another are thrown out of schools and we have no solution for any of them. Now the stoning. Well, what a message for the public how to treat PLWHAs. We always talk about the heartless West and about the rich tradition of our society but when it comes to discrimination we are par excellence, the tradition of caste system to this modern day underscores it.

So to discriminate and treat PLWHAs like 'Parayas' (what an expression, which is drawn from our caste system) is easy for us.

We should be questioning the strategy developed by the SACS across India in instilling fear in the public mind in disseminating the information on AIDS. All the posters and messages by the SACS did create fear in the public mind. Added to this the legacy of British prudishness, alias Victorian morality, which we now uphold as our 'dear' own did all the damage. Till now the Governments, neither the States nor the Central, did not come out strongly in dealing with the AIDS pandemic.

They hide behind the 'poor' NGOs in defending the onslaught. The politicians are worried about their vote banks and keep in cloister.

Sex and sexuality should be central to programmes but nobody wants to do anything. We are still debating whether we should have sex education in the schools or not. Again, all the targeted interventions, which has a content of discrimination in its policies added fuel to the fire. Sex workers, truck drivers and construction workers are all (regarded as ) enemies of the public.

For the last eight years, we have been pleading to the Government and all the concerned institutions to decriminalize sex work, but who cares. (Remember the arrests of NAZ International Activists, and remember the issue of Sangli, where Sabanam was beaten up, and Swpna Gayan of DMSC, too.

Remember the issue of the male sex workers of Bangalore, and the killings of sex workers in Kerala? I could write a long list, but all these we brought to the notice of the Government But who seriously listened to us? With this apathy from the side of Government, we, NGOs are bound to fail. And as a nation we will surpass all others in having an army of AIDS victims in the near future.

The NACO policy has no treatment for AIDS patients. They say it is too costly to treat people. The Government has all the money for buying weapons and now they are planning for a mission to the moon. There is no dearth of money for war but none for AIDS,TB. or malaria. I am pointing my finger squarely at the Government
apathy in addressing these problems.