Learning sentences without learning alphabets!!

Breaking my temporary break from blogging, I thought of writing a blog. Well there were lots of topics in my mind; some of them could be reservation, medico’s strike. But then I was caught unaware and in fact shocked by an article of TOI that India has now surpassed South Africa in terms of HIV infected population. It was shocking to learn that India now houses 5.7 million infected people and only 7% of these are receiving ARTs.

Well shocked I was definitely to learn that although with effort of WHO and UNAIDS to open 25 free ART distribution centers across India. (Which till date I deemed as considerable) this disease could not be held in check. Then when I gave thought to probable reasons I came up with some usual ones like expensive medicines (which still cost 1200-2500 per dose), social stigma attached, difficulty in educating the people about it et al. Coming to control on price of ARTs, its difficult to control the price given the expensive medicine and patent protection regime gearing up in India making it difficult to “copy” the same medicine here in India, the govt. should ensure that they do a better job with controlling the other aspects since many people do not come up because of the social stigma attached. The govt. was doing a fine job with educating with posters in mumbai reading Will Balbir Pasha get AIDS, running ads on TV depicting mother dropping hints to their children by knowingly holding object with AIDS awareness message on it, opening hotlines, messages in magazines, billboards, through awareness campaigns signing up celebrities and whats and what nots. And it was working for Mumbai

The govt. was doing a fine job until this happened. Reportedly in WB, govt. has sought to redesign the communication campaign by alleging that use of words like condom, sangam (intercourse), jingles from movies like hum tum ek kamre mein band hon claiming that these are “offending”. Well I leave it to you to ascertain the meaning and impact of these offending words and would wonder in such times when the communication should be more open considering the stage that India has entered owing to poor communication (enough was done but as we now find it…sad but true. ..that it was not enough). It’s like when one’s boat is getting drowned the govt. is saying that life guards shouldn’t use get the child wet because she will feel cold!!

I have always been a staunch supporter of sex education in India right at an appropriate school level because given the ignorance in such matters the atmosphere at home too doesn’t help much to make up for the same. With such kind of knowledge about basics of gender differences its not surprising if the volunteers have had tough time explaining things to younger and if I am not wrong the most vulnerable group leave apart the difficulty in opening them up.

Still wondering what the new campaign would read like without the use of basic words like sex and condom…any ideas?????