Anger Grows at UNICEF-funded HIV/AIDS Study By Ranjit Devraj NEW DELHI, May 28 (IPS) - The portrayal of an Indian caste as being inherently given to prostitution, in a government report on HIV/AIDS funded by the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF), has drawn condemnation from human rights and women's groups. After controversy grew over the report last month, UNICEF asked the Human Rights Commission in central Madhya Pradesh state (MPHRC), which carried out the study 'Caste-based Prostitution in Madhya Pradesh,' to withdraw its circulation. Leading the protests against the report, which castigated the Bedia and related communities in the state, were well-known human rights groups like the Joint Action Council (JAC) and the powerful All-India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA). ''The very concept of such a caste-based survey is repugnant to human rights and democratic thinking as it is premised on a belief that there is something intrinsic to the caste which makes women prostitutes and men pimps,'' said Brinda Karat, general secretary of AIDWA. ''It is unbelievable that the Human Rights Commission in Madhya Pradesh can even be associated with a document carrying such a title,'' said Anju Singh, activist for the JAC. ''The Commission has violated its own statutory obligations,'' she observed. ''We were not involved in any way with the supervision of the research but we take responsibility for not having guided its outcome,'' UNICEF representative in India Maria Calivis said in a letter this month to Karat. Karat pointed out that the 80-page report was ''replete with shocking generalisations'', such as one that said 50 percent of the women of the Bedia community were infected with HIV. ''There are no substantiations for such statements nor any details of the studies conducted, the number of people interviewed, or the details of the questionnaire,'' she said. In her view, the report was sensationalised and though meant ostensibly for the welfare of the Bedias and related communities, ended up insulting and deriding their members and violating their dignity and human rights. Calivis has admitted that the concerns raised by the AIDWA and other organisations were legitimate and that UNICEF had ''reservations about the quality of the survey and its conclusions.'' In Madhya Pradesh, the Bedia community has demanded withdrawal of the report as one which tended to make its members the object of suspicion and exacerbated caste discrimination. In an affidavit sent early May to Justice Gulab Gupta, chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission, youth groups of the community have demanded ''genuine help to uplift the community.'' Non-government organisations (NGOs) based in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, and in nearby Gwalior city that campaigned against the report include Ekta Parishad (Unity Forum) and the Self-Employed Women''s Association (SEWA). This is not the first time that a publication designed to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS and reduce its transmission through ''high-risk behaviour'' has offended the sensibilities of a particular community. Last year, Abhijeet Das and his wife Yashodhara, founders of the well-known NGO SAHYOG, narrowly escaped being lynched by a mob in the Himalayan town of Almora for suggesting in their pamphlet titled 'AIDS and Us' that incest was rampant in the region. Under pressure from local people, police handcuffed and paraded the Das couple and several of their volunteers through Almora before putting them in lockup for almost a month, invoking national security laws. Such incidents have led to growing public scepticism about the rather well-funded programmes to fight HIV/AIDS at a time when the government is steadily cutting funds for a tottering public health delivery system. Human rights groups have slammed the government not only for blatant human rights abuse but also for flaws in the government's vertical, anti-HIV programme funded mainly with a 544 million dollar World Bank loan. ''Incidents like these which incense the local people only highlight the alienated nature of policies being adopted not only in AIDS control but also in other spheres of development, funded from the outside,'' said Purushothaman Mulloli, general convenor of the JAC. India''s health minister, C.P. Thakur, has defended the programme. As a result of it, he said, people have become more aware of sexually transmitted diseases (STD)s and reproductory tract infections (RTI)s and were seeking treatment for these. But Thakur has accused U.N. agencies of ''misreporting facts and creating confusion,'' especially by putting out estimates and projections that there were nearly four million people living with HIV in this country of one billion people. ''In the Indian context it is difficult to estimate the exact prevalence of HIV because of the varied cultural characteristics, traditions and values with special reference to sex-related risk behaviours,'' Thakur said. (ENDS/IPS/ap-he-hd/rdr/js/01) IPS news reports appear daily in English, German, Finnish, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish. To subscribe, please contact us at: Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, North America. ipsnews@ips.org  TORONTO
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