Twenty Onwards Media

a poignant statement for HELP!

HELo peoPle, its ME!

It hAs recently coMe to my attention that it's a BEautIful, shiniNGplace out tHEre! with enough Love anD niceness And Goodness to go Around for everyone INthiSworld! iTs really very siMple to trYto find Warmth and contenment! Its reaLLy just Amatter of goiNg outsiDe and Moving About and looKing for it IN the right place Man! yEah thats right and you can finD it tOo friends! just like i have B, Like fO' shizzle! GoodneSs i have been Talking about tHis for long havEnt i reallY Comrades! bUTi Must saY, LookIng at the PoSition i am in nOw, its suFFicient to say i am happy! 

ITS lUCKy Super fun! yay! so wHy thE sLoPiness? you Morons, gEt happy!!!!!

SERIOUSLY!!!!

Indian Highways = HIV carriers

The NY Times continues its India Accelerating series, with another article today. Though the name of the series sound highly complimenting, the articles are not really like the series title. Today's article looked upon how the highways have become carriers of HIV in India. In fact, truckers are supposed to have one of the highest rate of infections in India. With 5.1 million infected, India comes close second to S.Africa in the number of infections. The more alarming part is the slow and limited response from the government.

Celebrating AIDS day in India does very little to further the fight against AIDS. With even talking about sex being a taboo in Indian society, proper sex education remains a pipe dream. This really makes Indians a hypocritical society, since its very obvious that there are more people 'doing it' in India at any given time than anywhere else in the world. Therefore, it seems ridiculous to have some sort of moral objection to discussing sex in open. Sex-education is often misconstrued as some sort of pornography. Majority of the Indian population is between the age of 15-30 yrs, therefore its even more vital that sex education become mandatory. Since, we are going to have more and more people 'doing it' in the future, its only logical that they be educated in safe-sex practices.

World AIDS day should be re-named 'Be Less Hypocritical Day' in India for now.

Manmohan Singh addresses the U.S Congress

The Indian Prime Minister addressed a joint session of the United States Congress yesterday. He made a good speech (Read it here) and became the 5th Prime Minister to do so. The first one being Nehru, of course.
Singh touched upon the maturing of the relationship between the two nations. I was interested in the part about co-operation on HIV/AIDS:

"The global challenge of HIV/AIDS is another area for India-US cooperation. President Bush and I have agreed on the need to provide increased international access to safe and effective anti-retroviral drugs."

Its great that the Prime Minister mentions AIDS as a grave threat, however, whether  his government is serious about tackling the problem is questionable. Take for example the recent patent law, it puts hurdles in the path of Indian Pharma companies from producing the much needed AIDS drugs at 1/10th the cost. Hopefully, the whole of Indian society wakes up to the threat fast, not just the government.

Explosion of AIDS

Anna at Sepiamutiny talks about the latest warning from UN AIDS director, Peter Piot about the rising infections in Asia mainly due to societies being unable to have an open discussion. There are more than 5 million people infected in India itself, the largest amount of infections in Asia and the second largest number in the world, after South Africa. Anna rightly points out fighting this denial in society is going to need a lot more than political will, education plays a very important role in combating this terror. I have a feeling though, that all this talk will never lead anywhere, society in India is not going to change. I say this because hypocrisy is deeply rooted in our society, its not even a class thing. Rape victims are treated like this, holding hands and walking alone in a park ends up in you paying a cop to get off your back. So,  talking or having an open discussion about sex is like an alien planet in a galaxy far-far away.

Aiding and Abetting AIDS

The AIDS pandemic has fast become a major problem in India, with the second largest number of cases in the world after South Africa, it poses grave danger to the country. Even though the cases are 0.2% of the population as compared to S.A, where the share is at 21.5%, the number still comes to 5 Million or so Indians infected. Even though the government has started to pay more attention it is far from accepting it as a major problem and the onus of providing help mostly falls on the NGO's. These organizations have been working hard to not only spread education but also gather proper data, which is highly important in understanding the pandemic in India.

Bill Clinton is in India right now to announce a program, which will train 150,000 doctors in treating AIDS (funded by his foundation). The Indian Health Minister announced earlier in the week, that the number of cases this year has taken a sharp fall as compared to last year. These numbers are supposed to be independently verified in the coming weeks. If this report is correct it would be great news, however the government in the past has always passed on numbers lower than the actual rate.
The government is not entirely dead on this issue, Indian scientists began clinical testing of AIDS vaccine a couple of months ago, so hopefully they should make some headway.

The other Bill helping in the fight against AIDS is the one from here (Seattle). The Gates Foundation has provided over $200 million over the past couple of years for programs in India. Many people may not like Microsoft, but Gates clearly is the biggest philanthropist in history, with over $20 Billion pledged in different programs the world over.

As greatly thankful we Indians should be towards these gestures, we also need to realize this its our problem as a society and only we can help ourselves in the end. Sex is very much taboo in Indian society even though our numbers clearly suggest we surely are an 'active' nation. Being a traditional society doesn't mean that we cannot discuss sex openly, nor does being open mean teaching the KamaSutra just because we came up with it. Indian pop-culture shows our confused state of mind, where family values as well as sex sells.

The first step in fighting AIDS is accepting it as a problem and talking about it, which is not an easy task even here in the U.S. But, we are the ones in the adverse position and we still keep digging ourselves in to the hole, the longer we take to overcome this first step.
This spread is not mainly because of illiteracy, ignorance is the main enemy here even among the educated. We surely have a long way to go, our treatment of rape cases and victims is one great example, its unbelievable that the nation's capital is one of the unsafest places for women in India. Treatment of women needs to be improved as in many cases the responsibility falls on them to educate their husbands regarding AIDS.
Another could be providing sex education in schools and colleges, in the long list of things that need to done. We really need to learn and for that we have great examples such as Thailand, where the rising threat forced breaking of social taboos which greatly curbed the number of infections. We really need to get our priorities straight.