Skip to main content

SEX, DRUGS and DIGNITY - quick reflections


Since the early 1990's, the national AIDS response in India worked with the outlawed and almost won.

Those who inhabited this response, called it the ‘HIV movement of India’, now 25 years since it began a proud and reflective group of individuals and institutions. 

There is real fear that the low overall HIV prevalence rates cannot be sustained if the change makers lose steam. 

That condom use cannot continue to do the trick without dignity of those most at risk is evident to those privy to the process of change so far.

When the same National AIDS programme worked with pregnant women, it struggled for air.

The AIDS programme’s history is as much a history of institutions as it is of individuals habiting them. It is as much a history of change as it is a history of stagnation. 

It is as a much a history of new learning as it is a history of stoic denial of new thinking.

While the programme achieved higher and higher condom use among hard to reach populations, it almost failed to ensure that this change is sustained by the dignity of the condom users, the target groups.

It is time to come together again. All those who care and all those who matter, need to assemble again, this time to tug at the fundamental transformational question of dignity.

No national programme in india has had the great fortune of having the best and brightest in the country galvanise at all levels to respond in a way that can only be called a ‘movement’…heaving at its own velocity.

The HIV response threw up parallel movements – each almost more potent than the other.


Leadership developed and bloomed – individuals more than institutions grew to find ways of implementing new ideas and take the necessary risks, push personal and institutional boundaries.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gaza numbers

 Escape  Escape to where the mind does not count  To when a smile is in tune  To where mixing is matching  And forest sounds talk to river gurgles And numbers fade and flow and fly.   
Post a Comment
Read more
The ‘A’ Certificate For ‘Phullu’ Is Yet Another ‘F’ For The Government’s Judgment I n its wisdom, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), Government of India, has deemed the Hindi film Phullu , fit only for ‘adult’ viewing because its story revolves around menstruation. The CBFC Chief, Pahlaj Nihalani, has defended this decision saying that young people in India aren’t ready yet to talk openly about ‘that time of the month’ leave alone watch a film about it.    Funny, tragic, outrageous, anachronistic. Add worse descriptors if you like, and they will fit. Even a couple of years ago, these responses would have sufficed, because underlying the outrage would be the hope that those in charge will learn the ropes and stop fooling around.   However, after three years in government, high officials should not expect any longer to be spoon-fed the basics of well-established feminist and freedom of expression arguments.   We must recognise a pattern when it is starin...
Post a Comment
Read more
  The Examined Life of Masculinities  (First published https://www.tarshi.net/inplainspeak/the-examined-life-of-masculinities/)   The Man-Woman binary is now, thankfully, nearly dead. The 2019 guidance [1] from the American Psychological Association gives us the good news that minus stereotypes and expectations, there isn ’t much difference in the basic behaviours of men and women. Some studies [2] , have established that, for example, men enjoy caring for their children as much as women do. And a 2013 meta-analysis [3] has found that adolescent boys, for example, contrary to expectation, displayed fewer externalizing emotions such as anger than did adolescent girls.   Almost unwittingly, the man-woman binary has left behind a progeny that we are still getting to know – the dualism of the masculine and the feminine, characteristics of which, we now know, reside in each of us.   The masculine and the feminine have been in bed with each other’s powers...
Post a Comment
Read more