Deepali Gaur Singh's blog http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/761/atom/feed 2008-03-13T12:51:43+00:00 Next President Must Change Course on PEPFAR http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/09/24/next-president-must-change-course-pepfar 2008-09-25T12:00:00+00:00 2008-09-25T01:24:52+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh India does not make the list of the fifteen focus countries targeted by the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), with Vietnam being the only representative from the continent. And yet the traditional make-up of the country, the emphasis on cultural mores and rituals and the contesting contexts and sub-contexts within the country, could easily act as an example for many parts of the world.

Here, like in many other countries, change is welcome as long as it does not disturb the traditional set-up of communities. Dislodging cultural practices, many of which might be gender imbalanced, continues to meet with opposition in the pursuit of preservation of this cultural ethos. And marriage is at the heart of most of the traditions guiding Indian society. A good marriage is where the woman redeems herself and a bad marriage is a curse she brings upon herself.

Therein lies the problem with the prostitution pledge PEPFAR grantees are obligated to sign. Fathers of girl(s), even today, in many parts of the country carry the "burden" of the girl until the time he finds a suitable groom only to shift that burden on to him. Hence, one of the easiest and oldest ways of luring unsuspecting girls and women into the sex trade is the promise of matrimony. Brought up amidst strong representations of virtue and honor, these are women who even when rescued from the labyrinthine network of the industry hesitate to return to their communities for fear of ostracism or the "shame" that they bring to the family. Thus, they are often compelled to return to the very life they long fight to leave. So are these young lives condemned to a life of stigma and discrimination and to be deprived of medical care and attention simply because they reconciled to sex work as their only means of survival. In a society where these women suffer a near pariah status the availability or non-availability of aid hinged on the prostitution pledge, in effect, is institutionalizing their vulnerability by covertly stating that these women do not deserve care and support because of the work they do.

Given the prevalence of HIV among sex workers, migrant workers, and the wives migrant workers return to, groups working within these communities are bound to find the prostitution pledge a major hindrance while attempting to provide legal, social and health services or in aiding in whatever way possible these sex workers. The prostitution pledge undermines the very programs that so far have proved the most successful in reversing the spread of the virus. It in effect excludes from its group of beneficiaries a substantial portion of the high risk populations in the country and also keeps out groups that do not fit into the high risk category.

So while a sex worker is denied care because the mode of transmission (sex work), the man transmits HIV to his spouse or to other partners due to decreased funding for condom provision or the lack of ability among sex workers to negotiate for condom use. What the "most-at-risk" group clause in PEPFAR does, then, is to keep HIV education, counseling and care out of the reach of these women who contract it from their husbands -- since they are not considered within the vortex of these high risk groups.

Married women form a substantial component of the HIV infected population mainly because of early marriages to much older and often already sexually active men. In the absence of information on the subject -- since sex itself is a taboo subject -- they very rarely are equipped to protect themselves from infections. Pregnancy is the entry point to discuss other issues like reproductive and sexual health, HIV/AIDS and even abortion.

This is significant in many cultural contexts in which contraception is socially and morally criminalized, leaving women with very few options of birth control. While a miniscule minority might be able to exercise their choice of timing the pregnancies and the use of contraceptives, by and large this choice is not available to most. For a long time midwives are the closest pregnant women have come to any kind of structured health care during and after their childbirths. In the absence of access to information on family planning, it is very often midwives who also act as the carriers of information on various issues like contraception and HIV. Public health experts in countries like India and even the Indian government recognized the role of family planning providers in also disseminating HIV prevention education and services, including testing, allowing this information to reach more people at risk of HIV.

What are the implications of the global gag rule (GGR) here? The GGR in effect is snatching from women their only access to information and help on the subject, especially since these family planning workers are often better positioned to prevent new infections among women and youth - also the more vulnerable groups.

The problem with clauses such as the global gag rule and prostitution pledge is that they give little maneuvering space to groups and organizations implementing the programs. These groups and organizations must ensure that the aid reaches those most in need yet, ironically, the aid ties the programs down by their embedded conditionalities, ultimately making them ineffective as they reach the least number in more time instead of the most in the least time.

The fight against the virus is not simply a matter of a successful morality lecture. Whom are we attempting to impact ultimately? All those who require this care or simply those who have made "morally correct" choices? Sustainable development in countries like India is hinged on family planning policies and a rights-based approach to HIV/AIDS. Can the implementation of any program towards controlling the virus be guided by a set of "dos and don'ts" or of disciplining certain groups (by denying them aid) for not leading a moral life, according to some?

A more significant danger of bills like PEPFAR is that they do find support amidst the more conservative pressure groups and policy planners in the country. So the focus could very easily be shifted from universal access to medical care, to practices similar to abstinence only, the prostitution pledge or abortion relegating more controversial measures to the background. The $50 billion effort of PEPFAR should ensure wider information and access to HIV/AIDS treatment as the immediate need and any denial of either funds or treatment to certain groups is an infringement on basic human rights.

There are critical choices that the new government has to make; choices that might reverse not just trends in the developing world with relation to maternal health but also as a consequence impact the health of the families they form, the communities they inhabit and the society they build.

]]> AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/09/11/aids-sutra-untold-stories-india 2008-09-11T12:00:00+00:00 2008-09-11T04:09:27+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh AIDSSUTRA: Untold Stories from India, an anthology of stories relating to HIV from sixteen well-known Indian writers, was launched in the country in early August. Published in collaboration with Avahan, the India AIDS initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the book is an assortment of case studies, narratives, anecdotes and snapshots from across the country, all linked by their examination of the effects of HIV on their lives and their country. 

HIV enjoys the diabolic distinction of having gained infamy as a dreaded disease that everyone knows of but knows very little about - a disease that belongs to another group, another community, another world. As a result, it's also a disease mired more in controversy and misconceptions than any real, reliable or useful information. And so while some of the book's narratives might seem familiar, there are others that are still unheard of. From the first recorded case of HIV in India, the fears and paranoia enveloping it at the time, and how much has changed since, the anthology covers the whole journey.  

Economist Amartya Sen's words "human ordeals thrive on ignorance" in the foreword sum up one of the critical issues plaguing HIV in the country -- that both the lack of information and abundance of misinformation are at the heart of the continuing discrimination faced by positive persons both in terms of access to health care and social exploitation and victimization which denies them and their families even basic human rights. In a tongue-in-cheek observation, to drive home this particular difficulty of misinformation, Sen refers to the bloated National Intelligence Estimates provided by the CIA of the 20-25 million AIDS cases in India by 2010 stating "how easily an organization dedicated to intelligence can fail to give much evidence of it." Subsequently, even the United Nation's five million estimate of HIV/AIDS cases in India was halved, last year, to between 2 and 3 million cases in the country.  

The essays, case studies, anecdotes, narratives, each in the authors' own genres, swing in turn from being touching to tortured, tragic to beautiful, poignant to pragmatic, as the writers expose the layers and lives of the real people behind the societal stereotypes of sex workers, truck drivers, the police, homosexuals, transgenders and most of all, positive persons. It brings to life the day-to-day struggles of people who have been marginalized by virtue of their profession or their sexual orientation, with the positive status only heightening their vulnerability further. And even as it gives a face and identity to these faceless millions and their families, taking us through their travails and tribulations, it also scratches the surface to expose the complexities that the HIV status brings with it. 

Toku's struggle - a physician who cares for AIDS patients - traverses legal corridors as we hear of his fight for the right to confidentiality of HIV test results - his own. What makes this story particularly important is that legal battles surrounding rights of positive persons are bound to be few and far between simply because often the high risk groups are also the ones that already inhabit the peripheries of the social system and HIV only entrenches this isolation. Toku's experience also exposes the convoluted interpretation of the right to privacy of an AIDS patient, which leads to a judgement denying positive persons the right to marry. While the judgement was dismissed in 2002, it reveals the limited avenues for redressal.

And then there is William Dalrymple's agonizing revelation of Rani's complete denial of her positive status as she plans a quiet farm life for herself and her family away from her profession, with the savings she has managed so far. Salman Rushdie's characteristic flair is evident in the equally flamboyant subject of his narrative -- Laxmi the "first drag queen of Mumbai" -- as well as a lucid account of the sub culture of the hijras, which even today try and blend their traditional roles of harbingers of good fortune with the modern day perils of their risky lifestyle. And there is "Soon." the faceless protagonist of Vikram Seth's narrative. In a candid admission of his own fears and subsequent cautiousness, Seth uses a poem he wrote in the 1980s amidst an atmosphere of fear of this "new disease called AIDS" and the accompanying lack of understanding, prejudices and myths surrounding the virus. The poem itself and the recollection of the times is a stunning vignette of the hopelessness, love and grief in an era dominated by the absence of an effective treatment for the virus.

There is the arbitrary interpretation of the Bombay Police Act that punishes indecency in public, leaving sex workers like Ashok and Savitha at the mercy of these law-enforcers and upholders of public decency, thereby paying the price for their "immorality" by frequent rape. Such relationships exist within the MSM (men who have sex with men) community as well - between the kothis and panthis as the former fulfil the sexual roles of women - and in this rather unequal relationship is embedded the heartrending compromise where being paid for sex becomes the parameter for ones' desirability.

As the writers travel across the country to hear individuals' stories, universal in their spiral of exploitation and vulnerability, they help unravel the subtle differences between each of these groups, whether it is the transsexuals, transvestites and transgenders; the MSM community who consider themselves different from the gay community; or the contexts governing the sex workers in different parts of the country; the IDUs and their vulnerability.  

With just a little over six percent of the 2.5 million infected persons having access to the antiretroviral drugs treatment in 2007 it is accessibility from both ends - that the government reach to all those in need and the accessibility of the positive persons to these facilities - that becomes imperative. While the lack of services directly impacts the positive person, the lack of information and misinformation impacts not just the positive persons, but also their families and the manner in which they are looked upon and treated within their communities. 

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} The book comes at a time of mixed fortunes for these groups/minorities since the Union Health Minister has shown serious intent to amend Section 377 - which in its current form criminalizes homosexuality in the country, even almost one and a half century after it was first declared illegal under British rule - without compromising on protection of child rights and from child abuse. On the other side are the government's contentious moves to amend the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act which many believe will push the trade into darker zones and alleys of victimization.

And yet these are narratives of people who even in the near hopeless situations have worked out compromises sometimes with their spouses - like the wife who knows about her husband's homosexuality and is at peace with it; a son who can stay at home as long as he dresses like a man indoors even as he leads a double life the minute he steps out of the secure confines of his home; or with law-enforcers where these groups learn to negotiate within already claustrophobic spaces.  

Sales proceeds from the book - Rs. 80 (US$2) from each book purchased - will go towards a fund for AIDS orphans.

]]> India Lags in Addressing Child Mortality http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/08/25/india-lags-addressing-child-mortality 2008-08-26T12:00:00+00:00 2008-08-26T03:30:06+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh Sixty-one years since Indian independence, a plethora of sops, schemes, programs, projects and a complete ministry dedicated to the child -- and yet over 2 million children did not live to see their fifth birthday in 2006, accounting for one-fifth of the world's children who died before turning five. India is home to 20 percent of the world's under-fives. What this means is that the global attainment of the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDG) depends on New Delhi's achievements in this respect.

India has pledged itself to the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for 2015. And child survival - reducing child mortality, also referred to as MDG 4 - poses one of the most serious challenges to these goals. It requires reducing the global rate of under-five deaths by two-thirds by 2015 from the 1990 levels. The death rate should be 30 deaths per 1,000 live births to meet the target.

While there has been a sure decline in the number of infant deaths in the Asia Pacific region, having come down to around four million in 2006 from 6.7 million in 1990, India alone, that year, accounted for half the number (2.1 million). Since 1960, the country has managed to reduce the death rate from 236 deaths per 1000 live births to 76 per 1,000 live births, and a growing economy has enabled India to reduce the under-five mortality rate by one-third. Yet despite the fact that the country is witnessing an economic boom, the growth restricted to small pockets of the country. Sixty percent of the under-five deaths occur in just five states -- telling a poignant story of the fight to survive. An Indian child's chance of celebrating the fifth birthday clearly depends on the state or community it is born into.

The urban-rural divide and several other socio-economic factors evidenced in the disparate Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) -- like the gap in the rural and urban IMR rates of 64 and 40, respectively; between boys and girls of 56 and 61, respectively; and in states ranging from 76 in central state of Madhya Pradesh to 14 in the southern and literacy high state of Kerala -- are the disparities in society reflected in the under-five deaths, and also indicate a strong link between poverty and child mortality.

The country's economy is growing at an average rate of nine percent a year, but still, two out of every five children in India are malnourished. Accompanying the economic boom is the shift to privatization of many essential services which has only widened the gap when it comes to accessibility of even very basic facilities. As the affluent demand better services, there has been a further deterioration in the availability and quality of government facilities. And since the MDGs are related to improving health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education and child protection, gender equality and women's empowerment, it is hardly surprising that the child mortality is a direct manifestation of the lack of these. More than 50 percent of this country's under-five deaths are associated with malnourishment and anemia, while another 30 per cent are caused by pneumonia. Further, an estimated nine percent of children are suffering from diarrheal diseases; in absolute numbers a figure that is even higher than that in Afghanistan.

That South Asia, as a region, spends only 1.1 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on public health expenditure, much below the world average of 5.1 percent, also reflects trends in the region. While the Indian budget did reflect a fifteen percent increase in the health sector, it still remains at a mere one percent of the GDP.

A new study by Save the Children compares child mortality in a country to its national income per person, clearly placing India behind poorer neighbors like Bangladesh and Nepal when it comes to cutting child deaths. Of the 41 countries ranked depending on how well they are using their resources to boost child survival rates India stands at a low 16, behind both Bangladesh and Nepal, who are in the top ten.

The entrenched discrimination against the girl child, evidenced in various forms of medical and technological misuse over the years (and the insidious transformation of older practices of infanticide to what came to be commonly termed as ‘feticide' in more recent years), also finds itself reflected in many communities in discriminatory child-rearing practices. What this means is that gender inequalities in the country determine access to food and medicine. Moreover, the poor health of the pregnant mother, also a manifestation of the status of women even in the marital homes with regard to diet and access to medical or health care facilities, also directly impacts the newborn. Lack of knowledge or information on child rearing and nutrition also play a part. With one out of every three women being underweight in India, it leads to low-weight babies who are more likely to die in infancy. The largest absolute number of newborn deaths in the world occurs in South Asia and India contributes around one quarter of the global total. It is hardly surprising then that South Asia is also the only region in the world where when compared to males female life expectancy is lower. So not only is the location that determines the chances of survival for children in the country but also their gender. Being born a girl carrying higher risks as it raises the chance of premature death between the ages of one and four by about one-third. Again it is hardly surprising that the region also has a massive gender imbalance in population numbers, with around 50 million more men than women.

With maternal mortality closely linked to child mortality - since the chances of survival of a child significantly reduces if the mother has died due to childbirth related complications - it really is the health (or the ill health) of the mother that is also a crucial issue. To combat this issue the Government of India relies on its Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) which has been running for over 30 years. But the MDG goals would require the government to re-evaluate its flagship program for mother and childcare, started in 1975, which provides health and nutrition education for mothers of infants and young children, along with other services, such as supplementary nutrition, basic health and antenatal care, growth monitoring and promotion, preschool non-formal education, micronutrient supplementation and immunization. The services delivered through a network of around 700,000 community (anganwadi) workers has had limited effectiveness due to a variety of factors, ranging from downright corruption and mishandling of the allocated funds, the limited skill and knowledge of anganwadi workers themselves to a lack of supervision, vacancies and flaws in program policy itself, reflected in the inadequate focus on the young children. Even today the maternal mortality remains between 300-500 deaths per 100,000 births, which means 75,000 to 150,000 women die every year in India during childbirth.

It has been interventions of local organizations, especially women's groups, working at the grassroots level within the communities that have been able to make any inroads in these orthodox structures. Working within the cultural ethos and cultural context these groups have built on the established structures within communities that extend to other areas of development, including education and credit, as well as health. And in more recent months hoping to tap into the potential of the access and community confidence these grassroots workers (like midwives) enjoy within the communities the government has adopted strategies to exploit their presence.

The UNICEF in collaboration with the center has launched a five year action plan which would use a grant of $700 million for child protection, education and nutrition and protecting children from AIDS. This 2008-2012 Country Program would jointly focus on India's infant and maternal mortality rates amongst other things. With both maternal and infant mortality so closely tied to societal practices, age-old customs and traditional roles that place less of a premium on the education and health of the girl child, the wife or the mother any effort to reverse this trend would also require a change in the status of women both in their paternal and marital homes with equal access to the most basic human needs; and where the chances of survival of the infant remain equal irrespective of the socio-economic background or geographical location of the community it is born to.

]]> Abortion Denial in India Highlights Limitations in Law http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/08/20/abortion-denial-india-highlights-limitations-law 2008-08-21T12:00:00+00:00 2008-08-21T03:00:24+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh A typing error -- casting a fetus's chance of being born without a significant handicap as "very fair" when the doctor intended to write "very few" – resulted in the denial of abortion services to an Indian woman named Niketa Mehta.  A week later, Niketa suffered a miscarriage, but the initial denial by the Mumbai High Court raised a storm over not just Niketa Mehta's particular fetus and her right to abort it but also over a woman's autonomy over her body.

The High Court ruled that her request for the termination of pregnancy due to a congenital heart condition of the fetus was akin to "mercy killing" and given the stand the judiciary has had so far on mercy killings, her plea was rejected. (Ironically, the Indian law allows what the Mumbai High Court chose to term as "mercy killing" til 20 weeks of pregnancy.) So what Niketa could have easily exercised as a personal choice a couple of weeks earlier had been denied to her.

The hospital where Niketa's case was diagnosed gave absolutely opposite opinions of the fetus within 72 hours; this anomaly in diagnosis was quickly attributed to a typo-error. A diagnosis that the attending physician meant to read as "very few chances" the child would not be born handicapped or incapacitated was transcribed as "very fair chances" that the child would be born without a handicap. So eventually the abortion was denied on the grounds that the diagnosis by experts did not establish the certainty of a handicap. Moreover, India’s abortion laws allow for a pregnancy to be terminated after 20 weeks only if there was a fatal risk to the mother and not the fetus.

The attempt to amend the law now has been put into the hands of the legislature, as the existing laws did not permit Niketa to abort her fetus. The plaintiff had found out only in the 24th week of her pregnancy that the fetus had a congenital heart block. She was told by doctors that the child would need a pacemaker right at birth and the quality of its life would be poor.

The health minister, who has been busy with far more contentious issues like actors smoking on screen, is of the opinion that this "one case is not enough for the health ministry to decide on an amendment on the law." The amendment would allow for abortions beyond the 20 week moratorium in cases like Niketa’s, in which medical conditions with regard to the fetus become evident only at later stages of the pregnancy.
The petitioners had also contended that their middle-class background would make it economically difficult to provide for the pace-maker every five years. With absolutely no state support for special needs children, and in a country where income disparities and unequal access to medical and health facilities are so glaringly evident there are many, including gynecologists, who are pressing for a change in the law, especially in the context of those grossly ill-informed and/or misinformed on what it entails once the child is born.

On medical grounds too, there are many who claim that the risk to the mother in case of termination of pregnancy at 25 weeks is not significantly higher than the risk at 20 weeks.

Abortion has been legal in India since 1971 under certain conditions, most of which relate to the health of the fetus and the pregnant woman and some other extraneous conditions. Abortion continues to be a very tricky issue in the Indian context of sex-selective abortions. But it is important to understand that sex-selective abortions are a phenomenon that grew more out of the ability to know the sex of your child and not from the right to legal abortion. And it is this constant attempt to mix the two arguments that finds pro-choice activists and woman's rights organizations having to tread carefully while working to create a space for contraception, abortion and a simultaneous intolerance to sex-selective abortions. Moreover, with the knowledge of the gender of the child available through a variety of techniques and definitely by the 20 week cut off period for a legal abortion (if not earlier), the argument that such an amendment could be abused by those attempting to engineer a male heir hardly stands.

A case that is bound to swing between the spectrums of personal trauma and ethical issues, the judgment directly affects the question surrounding certain complications of the fetus that show up only in later weeks (between the 22nd to the 24th), and since abortion at this stage is illegal, medical practitioners refuse to abort the child forcing couples to turn to quacks, potentially endangering the mother even further. Using the argument that medical experts did not express any "categorical opinion that if the child is born it would suffer from serious handicaps," the court chose to dismiss the plea affecting the amendment of the medical termination of pregnancy as well. The hospital, which once was willing to give a more direct opinion to the parents-to-be, obviously was not willing to take responsibility for an opinion which is bound to change the law itself. The court went on to state that had the couple approached even before 20 weeks it would not have been possible to allow abortion, as the medical opinion was contrary; an irony indeed in a country where over 10 million fetuses--all female--have been aborted in the last two decades at the rate of 500,000 a year.

Even though the government and the judiciary may think differently, there are many in the medical fraternity who have supported this couple in their decision and the need for an amendment. Quite aware of the Pandora's box the issue is bound to open up, the gynecologists, many of whom are members of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI, which is affiliated to the International Federation of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists) and have aligned behind this couple and others who might find themselves in a similar situation and believe that the time has come to change the 1971 Act. 

An argument meant to empower women and their bodily sovereignty can so easily be held hostage to emotive arguments even as the state is able to do little to stop the abuse of the same law when it comes to sex-selective abortions. While a feminist discourse on procreative liberty is as much about the right to avoid reproduction as the right to reproduce, statistics reflecting the abuse of this choice in India carry the danger of hijacking the argument and consolidating opinion among those who oppose abortion access. And even as the discourse continues a personal decision eventually became a legal battle for a woman who was unsure of the quality of life she could ensure for her child once it is born.

]]> India's Red Ribbon Express Connects Citizens to HIV Information http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/07/29/indias-red-ribbon-express-connects-citizens-hiv-information 2008-08-16T13:10:44+00:00 2008-08-16T13:37:24+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh On July 24 a specially designed train with seven cheery yellow coaches chugged in to the Bangalore railway station, carrying in it a motley group of cultural troupes, educational materials and giant models, one of which is of a pregnant mother with an automated voice of a child that regularly reminds her of precautionary measures during the pregnancy. With a salute to life and the inspiring slogan ‘Zindagi Zindabad' (literally meaning ‘Long Live Life'), the Red Ribbon Express (RRE) started its year-long journey along the length and breadth of India carrying the critical messages associated with HIV/AIDS. That the Indian railways should be made the vehicle of this campaign is apt since it is the one government-run machinery that single-handedly connects and reaches out to the largest numbers in the country.

In partnership with various international, national, state and local organizations, the Indian Railways employed the colourful coaches of the train to convey, through innovative and interactive educational material, information on HIV specifically dealing with primary prevention services and enhancing people's knowledge about such preventive measures, health habits, lifestyle and safe behavioral practices and developing a more unprejudiced understanding of the virus and consequently removing the associated stigma and discrimination against positive persons and their families.

In the constant effort to reach as many people in as little time as possible, the battle against HIV, at times, has been difficult, especially in a country where outreach to the remotest of areas continues to be plagued by numerous obstacles, poverty and illiteracy being at the core of all these issues. And it is keeping this in mind that this campaign seeks to prioritise those far-flung villages that already suffer a minimal or the complete lack of media or government interventions.

After over seven months on the tracks the train made its pit-stop in the southern state of Karnataka, where during its halt here, it is expected to reach out to at least 5,000 people a day. Flagged off from New Delhi on December 1, 2007, the train aims to mainstream the issue of HIV in the context of overall socio-economic development, a concern that had thus far remained in the realms of a medical and/or public health issue. Envisioning a multi-sectoral approach based on the combined use of the multimedia and mass mobilization, the project aims at a holistic and comprehensive campaign in 180 halt stations, across approximately 43,000 villages of 24 states and union territories to mobilize a people's movement against AIDS.

Of the seven coaches of the RRE three coaches carry educational material primarily on the virus but linked to other programs as well supported by multimedia tools like interactive touch screens and 3-D models. One of the coaches is the auditorium-cum-conference arena for film screenings and orientation and sensitization sessions for selected groups of community stakeholders. One coach is specifically dedicated to counseling and medical services with doctors available for syndromic treatment for STI and RTI cases. While there is no onboard HIV testing facility there are provisions for referral services to the nearby ICTC and other care and support services on HIV/AIDS. The remaining two coaches are dedicated to the food and accommodation arrangements for the traveling team.

Besides, the in-train activities that include exhibitions, audio-visuals, films, training, counseling and medical services at every station that the train docks there are also on-platform activities that include an exhibition and cultural performances on the platforms till the departure of the train. And during these days the outreach activities in to villages revolve around cycle and bus caravans. While the latter (bus caravan) travels to the peripheries of each district as per the route map taking with them knowledge on the virus and the associated risks, the former includes the use of the performing arts (specific to the local, regional and cultural context) to disseminate the HIV prevention messages. The performers disperse to the selected villages in the districts on cycles singing songs, telling stories, enacting incidents, staging plays with one common thread - all with HIV related issues woven in to them.

Using traditional techniques of a more rustic brand of infotainment through folk theatre and songs these traveling artistes not only disseminate information but simultaneously break myths and misconceptions that have continuously besieged every affirmative action to combat HIV. While maps on board the train give a clearer perspective on the extent of the threat of HIV/AIDS in various states, the giant blood bags and syringes are to bring greater clarity to the modes of transmission of the virus. Age- and gender- customized interactive animated films, games and quizzes testing the HIV/AIDS IQ of visitors as well as condom vending machines, (with condoms at Rs 5) are the other activities and facilities that make up this grand HIV-centric traveling carnival. From the importance of using single-use disposable syringes - a concern area since many infections have been located to IDUs - to using HIV safe blood from a licensed blood bank; from how the transmission of HIV to the child during pregnancy can be prevented with right medication to the options for HIV positive pregnant women, the train is literally a hub of information on the virus and associated concerns. With groups travelling to various villages everyday the RRE is also covering this distance for a greater sensitization towards positive persons and their families, an issue which has manifested itself in various degrees and forms of ostracization and isolation and continues to dog all efforts at basic human rights and dignity for positive persons.

An important component is what is seen as environment building at the program villages which will use traditional, popular techniques of information dissemination in literacy--poor, rural areas like loud-speaker campaigns, besides the more common methods of wall-writing, hand outs and pamphlets. Additionally, the interactive sessions would involve crucial stakeholders of the village with a deliberate focus on youth groups, women's self-help groups (SHGs), Anganwadi Workers (AWWs), adolescents/student community from schools and colleges or non-student youth, particularly in these rural areas. One of the important government assignments of the AWWs has been their outreach campaign for pregnant and lactating mothers, which is what also makes them crucial access links to this group with regard to HIV testing as well as preventive measures for pregnant positive mothers. Similarly, youth and women groups or SHGs already have established contacts within the villages and hence enjoy a greater level of comfort and trust within the community thus allowing for such community-based interventions to be more successful.

From Karnataka the train now heads to Goa and is already on its return journey as it goes through the west to the extreme north of the country and eventually returns back to Delhi on November 28, 2008. Even as the RRE continues to break ground by tackling issues in the interiors of the country which would be otherwise considered taboo, on the basis of its interactions and interventions it also fixes the role and responsibility of various sections of the government with regard to creating awareness and controlling new infections is concerned.

Quite ironically a train that, during the course of its journey, will cut across all those states that blocked the sex education curriculum for adolescents is drawing school children in hordes. So even as sex education remains a contentious issue this train with HIV/AIDS at the centre of its theme (and evident from the response it has garnered) exposes the obvious disjunction in many policies and programmes that distance themselves from crucial issues on the basis of arguments rooted in traditions and culture. Not surprisingly many politicians continue to reduce the entire issue of combating HIV to that of "abstinence-only" and "the importance of upholding values" even as the response to the RRE reveals the average Indian's willingness to utilise information and services as long as it reaches them in a manner and language that is comprehensible to them and located within their specific local context.

]]> India's Insensitivity Towards Victims of Violence http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/07/08/india-shows-little-sensitivity-towards-victims-violence 2008-07-21T12:00:00+00:00 2008-07-21T13:36:36+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh Witnessed voyeuristically, violence gets insidiously soaked in to everyday life in India. Yet ironically, sensitivity towards victims of such crimes remains abysmally low. So is crime really out there just for a daily dose of entertainment, until it comes visiting too close for comfort?

In a country that worships its celluloid heroes, there have long existed a separate strain of actors called action stars. Action stars disregard the system and evidence a disturbing sexist disposition in dealing with women. The wronged protagonist takes law in to his own hands and corrects what the system could not. At the end of the day it is still violence, but oddly, justified violence.

Cinematic vigilantes have not just remained in the celluloid world. More recently, groups have chosen to disrupt anything and everything that is unpalatable for them, from a film to an exhibition, a musical show or a television program. And yet despite the presence of such ‘vigilant' social groups you still have women being raped, children being sexually abused, girls being sold in to the sex trade and couples being killed for mixed (inter-religious, inter-caste) marriages.

The system, as it has been, most often targets the women who are themselves victims of the plethora of crimes visible in society. A rape victim is made to relive her horror to an insensitive machinery over and over again (even before a First Information Report is registered) until she either drops the case or, worse still, commits suicide, as did Sarita. Sarita consumed poison in the presence of her young daughters in front of the police station that refused to listen to her complaints against one of their own. Her death eventually led to the suspension of the constables. So in this equation of crime versus punishment, rape+death=suspension. An elopement equaled death in the case of an inter-caste couple in Ballah, in the northern state of Haryana. The bodies of the couple, after being strangled, were then ‘exhibited' in front of the girl's parental home in an unbridled display of family honor, to be made an example of for anyone else intending to engage in an inter-caste alliance. That the entire village backed the act and the administration looked the other way is a reflection of how deeply entrenched these social hierarchies and practices are, even those employed to deliver justice and prevent such crimes irrespective of caste or religious considerations tend to covertly, and often overtly, help maintain theses social structures.

How ignorant and insensate an entire community can be was quite starkly evidenced in the agonizing experience of a four year old boy molested at his preschool in Bangalore, in southern India, recently. Not only did this prestigious preschool not entertain the complaint initially but later, after sacking the woman accused of the crime, asked both the police and parents not to pursue the matter. The reputation of the preschool obviously outweighed the more serious concerns of not only letting the offender go scot-free and potentially abuse more children but also identifying any other victims. Unfortunately, that is what might eventually happen to the case since the police already exposed how ill-equipped they were while groping for the clause of law to invoke against the woman. And, tragically, the initial delay in reporting the matter had been because despite the tell-tale signs on his body the parents failed to perceive it as a case of abuse and continued sending the boy to the preschool.

Clearly a case of gross negligence has arisen from an elitist mindset which assumes that incestual and/or child abuse are symptomatic of particular social and class contexts. Though the incident questions both the society and administration's capability in dealing with sexual crimes and assaults in general and against children in particular, it also presents a bleak scenario of the manner in which these crimes and their victims are handled when they occur amidst the more underprivileged sections of society which continuously struggle to find a voice for themselves within the entire system.

The sensational murder of Aarushi and Hemraj in the National Capital Region (NCR) clearly points to this trend. The uproar over the mishandling of the case and the ‘character assassination' of a dead fourteen year old - though completely inappropriate - comes more from a skewed class consciousness where our collective conscience chooses to react to this case the manner in which concepts of dignity, honor and reputation are being played out over the untimely and tragic death of a young girl from a more privileged background. The other death (of the domestic help, Hemraj) is almost forgotten, remembered, if at all, and important only as far as his role in Aarushi's death is concerned. But we have known the police system to have always operated like this.

Cases of missing girls (as happened with the Nithari murders 18 months back in NCR) were not even registered at the area police station and parents, mostly poor, migrants were dismissed saying the girls in all probability had ‘eloped'. And yet again, quite similarly, in the Aarushi case is the insidious validation of honor killing (til proven otherwise) since the initial police theories revolved around the premise of the usual suspects - compromising position, young daughter and an unsuitable suitor (here being the domestic help). And even as many wait to hear the truth, the killing of the girl in a fit of rage by the father almost enjoys a tacit sanction. That...kind of explained it! After all, what else could a father have done?

Each of these cases reveals that in the entire socio-economic and political set-up and the manner in which various administrative departments and its functionaries act within it, only places street children, sex workers and transgender people in even more vulnerable positions and the lack of any support services further serves to institutionalize crimes against certain groups and sections. Besides, while young boys are equally at risk as girls because of the stereotypical roles and behavior patterns assigned, they find different ways of coping with it, very often manifested in a spiral of violence and crime.

Certain cases will enjoy more attention and pressure groups play a certain role in the dispensation of justice. But there has been a consistent failure by the state to intervene and protect the basic rights of its citizens and in dispensing justice whether it is the case of rape victims or honor killings (despite the fact that mixed marriages are constitutionally protected). Social isolation is the mildest of punishments. While honor is reposed in the daughter's reputation and a higher percentage of girls are victims men have also been punished, as witnessed in the Ballah case. The only difference is that while the girl is murdered by her own family the boy too is punished by the girl's family and not his own. Ironically, Haryana, the state that figures amongst the frequent offenders for honor killings is a state which has enjoyed economic success through its land and is also one of the states whose administration has repeated tried to block women's inheritance in the act of succession but failed.

]]> LGBT Activists March, Pull off Masks in India http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/07/14/lgbt-activists-march-pull-masks-india 2008-07-17T12:00:00+00:00 2008-07-17T17:41:08+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh Amidst the riotous colors of rainbow-colored flags, boas and saris, the beating drums and slogan-shouting and an atmosphere of defiance and celebration, sexual minorities made themselves heard in the three cities of Bangalore, Delhi and Calcutta at the Gay Pride Parade on June 29 -- a first-time for many, a decade old for some. This day was chosen by representatives of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York, sparking the gay rights movement nationwide. In possibly the largest display of gay pride of its kind in India, LGBT activists chanted for their rights, to end discrimination and push for acceptance in a society where intolerance is widespread and where homosexual acts are illegal. As thousands of people in another part of the world celebrated the slow, state-by-state legalization of same-sex marriage, in India the fight is for the decriminalization homosexuality itself.

Activists waved banners stating "377 Quit India," calling for the removal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that continues to make homosexuality illegal in the country, 145 years after it was first criminalized under the British rule. The banners referred to the anti-colonial Quit India movement and implied that Section 377 is an unneeded colonial leftover. And Hindu mythology, replete with references to transgenders and sexual minorities, points to evidence of, if not the acceptance but, at least the existence of these sexual minorities. Despite the concepts of masculinity and virility, Arjun, a great warrior of the Mahabharat, is known to have disguised himself as Brihannala, a transgender dancer (and an accomplished one at that) during exile. Ayyappa is the son of Shiva (a male God) and Vishnu (another male God but in the incarnation of an enchantress). Shikhandi was the warrior in the epic Mahabharata that no one could kill because he was ‘neither man nor woman.' The 15th century Hindu epic, Krittivasi Ramayan, refers to "children of two wombs," believed to be born to two women.

The significance of the march is even greater, coming at a time when the Delhi High Court was expected to hear arguments on overturning the law that forbids homosexual acts and carries a punishment of up to 10 years in prison. The high court subsequently directed the central government to clarify its stance on homosexuality considering that the home ministry favors punishment (in line with the current law), while the health ministry, looking at it from the perspective of health monitoring, opposes enforcing this law. The law is rarely enforced, but its very existence institutionalizes discrimination and exploitation in every sphere of life, professional and personal.

Calcutta has been organizing the Rainbow Pride Parade since 1999. That it has taken almost a decade for it to catch up in other cities speaks to the insulation that the LGBT community lives in. And this was amply reflected in the myriad masks, rather than faces, that made up the group of marchers. While many did unmasked themselves and announced themselves to the public, the symbolism cannot be missed here for those who understand the dynamics of survival for sexual minorities in Indian society. The reality of discrimination and the fear of ostracism continue to dog every attempt members of the LGBT community make to become a part of mainstream society.

More urbane, educated groups are able to find their support networks even if they operate more clandestinely. Urban support, through movie screenings and newspaper editorials and petitions calling for revisions in the law by prominent writers and activists, is quite evident; it is those, particularly in the transgender community, from less privileged backgrounds who find themselves vulnerable to exploitation of all kinds from the administrative system and society as well. Ghettoized and invisible, they live their lives on the peripheries of society, forced to eke out their living through traditional methods: they are viewed as harbingers of good fortune if they turn up at your threshold before major family functions like marriages, child births or other auspicious occasions (though these were probably disguised methods of giving up a child of ‘uncertain' gender by his or her family to the community of transgender people). Revered and feared simultaneously, as it is culturally believed that their curses are as potent as their blessings, survival has taught them to use the society's discomfort with them by developing their own style of aggressive begging.

But it is their lives as sex workers which are marked by exploitation and vulnerability with no access to any support, information or even available health care facilities. This is particularly important given that the HIV infection rate among gays has been on the rise with Bangalore, reporting every fifth gay as positive according to a report from the National AIDS Control Organization and the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare. In 2004 it was already high, at ten percent, a trend that is being reflected in many cities across the country.

The change, albeit slow, is palpable. In 1996, conservative right-wing groups demanded the ban of the film ‘Fire,' because of a lesbian relationship between two sisters-in-law. Over a decade later, while the march itself was condemned by the same right-wing leadership, no opposition surfaced during the event itself. And yet you have the poignant tale of the gay prince of Rajpipla disinherited by his family due to his sexual orientation.

The march itself, whether under the banners of ‘Bengaluru Pride 2008' or ‘Queer Dilliwalla' (The Queer of Delhi), was not just protesting social rejection but also the discrimination faced particularly by transgenders in getting voter identity cards, ration cards, passports, driving licenses and other official documents. Marchers were also demanding better housing, education, employment, savings and credit facilities, insurance, old age pension and shelter homes. Ironically, the state of Madhya Pradesh, which has not witnessed a march of this kind, has already had a member from the LGBT community in the state assembly, an indicator of the impact proactive measures of assimilation into the mainstream can have on groups. Over time she was recognized not just as a representative of the sexual minority community but someone working for the local community issues as well.

The government in Tamil Nadu, in southern India, will soon undertake a census of transgenders in the state to facilitate the distribution of identity cards for them. The government will also include the category of transgender under sex in application forms for education institutions.

Laws in civil society play an important role in channeling the manner in which issues are handled both administratively and socially, but a law can be rendered ineffectual if society does not engage proactively towards this change. While the onus has been on LGBT individuals to "come out of the closet," and their visibility in the mainstream is responsible for moving discussion forward, the crucial question is how much are we, as a society, moving towards complete assimilation and acceptance, and not merely tolerance? ]]> Grassroots Efforts In India Fight Spread of HIV http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/06/13/local-lens-grassroots-efforts-fight-spread-of-HIV 2008-06-19T12:00:00+00:00 2008-06-19T03:29:27+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh After a prolonged back-and-forth between diverse agencies over actual HIV/AIDS statistics in India, the figure that India's National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) has settled on is an estimated 2.5 million people who are living with the virus in the country, accounting for 13% of global HIV infections. In India, like in many of the developing nations, these infections occur primarily during unprotected heterosexual intercourse. As a result, women are increasingly becoming vulnerable to the disease, particularly in rural areas. In the face of extreme poverty and illiteracy coupled with poor health and poorer health care facilities, the task of tackling the virus is daunting.

And yet it would be naïve to assume that the virus only afflicts certain groups in certain regions. Despite the fact that HIV came late to India, the infections have multiplied at such a fast pace that HIV is no longer restricted to particular communities but cuts across all segments of society. And while various critical components like sex education, condom campaigns, contraception and family planning continue to be obstructed by the fine print of political and social agendas, initiatives within individuals' and groups' own social milieus raise hopes that we can make some gains against the virus.

Bringing Prevention Education to Youth, Armed Forces, and Women

Sex education, one of the important tools for dealing with the virus, has become a political flashpoint between many state governments. So the country's premier health institution, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences' (AIIMS) recent initiative could be an important step in the direction of pre-marital sex education. AIIMS has proposed a 'pre-marriage course' for individuals who are over 18 years of age and planning to get married. As a response to the growing incidences of marital discord, sexual disharmony, and HIV/AIDS and STIs amongst young couples, the initiative aims at dispelling myths about the human body, sex and contraception while preparing them physically, socially and emotionally for marriage. A crucial component of the course is advice on pre-marital screening for specific genetic and acquired diseases. While currently restrictive by its urban reach, if successful, it could prove to be an important model for other government-run health institutions to follow in a manner that they reach the areas where the information is most crucially required -- particularly where child marriages continue to dog any real development efforts.

In the battle against HIV another group, who, by the nature of their engagements and length of deployment, have also been considered high-risk: the country's security personnel. Yet the exclusionary and closeted nature of their functioning has made any real statistics on the threat potential and actual cases difficult to appreciate, putting their spouses back home at even higher risk of contracting the virus and passing it on further through pregnancies. However, recent indications point towards a reversal in the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among the armed forces, with growing awareness about the virus and preventive measures. According to reports from the Army, in addition to continuous awareness campaigns there have been concerted efforts to grant leave to these soldiers, at regular intervals, believed to have helped in checking newer infections. The forces engaged in counter-insurgency operations in some of the northeastern states of high HIV infections were seen as the most vulnerable. Recent figures, albeit conservative, indicate a drop in new infections among personnel from 144 in 2004 to 35 in 2006.

Basic lack of access to information has seriously hampered prevention efforts. For years, initiatives hardly took in to account the obstacles of illiteracy and poverty. Women are not only handicapped by the denial of education, but also by early marriages and almost immediate pregnancy, often throwing them into a sexual relationship with a much older man with a history of risky sexual behavior. In the case of child marriages, the situation would hardly be any different: the groom is misinformed on the issues of sex, AIDS/HIV and STIs as is the bride ill-informed, immediately pushing both into stereotypical societal roles and practices guided by the pressures of masculinity or/and virility for men and fertility for women.

More recent media messages have clearly targeted the misconception that HIV afflicts a certain section of the society (like truckers, sex workers or drug-users) and it is this misreading that over the years had made several other groups vulnerable to the virus. And even though overall prevalence remains low, the threat is that even relatively minor increases in HIV infection rates have the risk of multiplying very fast.

Accessible Testing and Treatment

At a time when accessibility continues to be an obstacle for most affected or at risk groups, Indian researchers are developing a forty minute, on-the-spot diagnosis similar to throat swab tests. The kit has already been used in Wardha, in western India, to test 1003 women, 82% of who were ignorant about their status. A method quite similar to the pregnancy test, the feasibility of immunochromatography is in its use even in highly busy, rural labor rooms in the country. The significance of this method is its immediate accessibility to rural households, particularly women, who have suffered high degrees of susceptibility due to lack of access to both information and laboratories conducting these tests.

The Indian Railways Ministry's fare concessions to positive people travelling to specific NACO antiretroviral treatment centres (ART) from April this year, however tokenistic, is still a move in the direction of accepting AIDS as a ailment like others (railways already offer fare concessions to people living with various medical conditions like tuberculosis, leprosy, etc.). While in its current form, the concession appears to be restrictive in that many of the trains might not even touch the areas where prevalence is high, the honesty of the effort will be demonstrated over time if it accommodates to reach as many vulnerable populations and groups as possible.

Changing Attitudes Towards People Living with HIV

Sensitization towards positive patients still remains a core element of concern when dealing with the virus. Instances of doctors refusing to treat AIDS patients, women being thrown out of their marital homes after being widowed by a positive spouse (despite having been the care-givers), an adopted child being returned once found to be infected, a dead person denied a cremation, children of positive parents being denied admission in schools are just some of the instances of the apathy, stigma and associated discrimination that positive persons and their families have to continuously content with. Thus, while containment of new infections is an important strategy to prevent the spread of HIV both regionally and globally, equally crucial are human rights concerns guided by empathy for the patient, equal access to basic facilities and treatment and de-stigmatization.

Though ninety nine percent of the adult Indian population is HIV negative, any real success in tackling the HIV epidemic lies not in only reversing the trend in growing infections but in reversing the attitudes towards the virus and the manner in which positive patients and their families are treated as well so that they are able to lead healthy lives not just physically but mentally and socially as well.

]]> Dowry: An Unwelcome Guest at Indian Weddings http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/05/28/dowry-an-unwelcome-guest-indian-weddings 2008-05-29T12:00:00+00:00 2008-05-30T18:33:31+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh The word dowry in the Indian context literally means the payment in cash and/or in kind by the bride's family to the bridegroom's family along with the ‘giving away' of the bride under the system of Hindu marriage. There are many conflicting versions of the origin of the system itself but with due credit to all versions of this social practice one finds it hard to believe there could ever have been a justification for it in a context where women were treated unequal to men and as a burden upon the paternal home.

‘Dahej,' the Hindi term for dowry, is quite unequivocally derided as an ugly word even though in practice, many participate, accept or give dowry - wherein lies the dichotomy of this odious practice. Even the educated, professional elite of the country have contributed to the institutionalization of the practice despite the existence of a law criminalizing it. Many of its flagrant violators are also government functionaries entrusted with the job of implementing the law in the first place.

‘Streedhan' - the milder and more acceptable usage for the same practice literally meaning a ‘woman's wealth' - was believed to be the original intent of the much abused dowry system today. It was the wealth the father gave his daughter in the form of money, jewelry or cattle at the time of her wedding, meant as her financial security, since women did not enjoy a share in family property. Over time the amount began to be determined by the groom's side of the family in lieu of the alliance.

Gradually, dowry became the opportunity for the groom's side to redeem all the ‘investment' gone in to the education of their son(s) from the girl's side of the family. Thus, the quality of education, the degrees accumulated and the potential jobs were the parameters to demand exorbitant amounts of money from the prospective bride. Ironically, in a country where education continues to come at a premium largely due to mass scale poverty, an educated bride not only dwindled her chances at finding a suitable alliance (since educated boys were not easy to come by) but also, consequently, exponentially increased the dowry demands off her family.

So the system found a way of penalizing parents for spending on their daughters' education.

But the dowry system is not a rural or small town phenomena and neither has it declined with increased levels of more equitable education in the urban areas of the country. Globalization brought with it interesting materialistic alterations. From demands for hard cash the stipulations switched to motorbikes or cars and household items (considered luxury items in many households) like refrigerators and television sets. Most police stations in the country are known not to lodge cases of dowry and police officials rarely treat the cases with any seriousness simply because of its social legitimacy. It is not considered a crime even though it is illegal by legislation.

There are many rituals leading up to a wedding, which more often than not must be hosted and funded by the bride's family, even if it means taking a loan. In more contemporary times dowries have metamorphosized into demands for theme weddings and not necessarily material items like a computer or washing machine. So while theme weddings might have spawned a complete industry by themselves for wedding planners, the truth is that the exorbitant costs of these weddings are almost always completely borne by the bride's family. The economic setback this involves for families is very often the reason why daughters are hardly welcome in most families with disastrous consequences for the gender ratio in the country.

The dowry demand and the manner in which it guides alliances are also responsible for the limited commitment made towards the education of girls in the country. It is not uncommon to find advertisements on relatively progressive media also guided by such social constructs. So while one invested in the son's education, it was equally prudent to start saving early for the girl's wedding (meaning dowry).

The absence of any serious and concerted efforts to deal with this social issue have taken it to the next level -- resulting in dowry deaths when the bride's family does not comply with their dowry promises. The "accidental" deaths of young brides in the kitchen due to stoves bursting just within the first few years, or deaths termed as suicide over the years led to a more severe legislation; legislation which put the onus of proving innocence on the husband and the in-laws of the victim, if the death occurred within the first seven years of marriage. More recently, there have been moves to remove the seven year cap because of instances of women enduring dowry-related torture even two decades into a marriage.

And even as statistics on dowry deaths point to one reported every 45 minutes (besides the cases of mental harassment and torture that are largely undocumented), a more recent judgement by the Supreme Court has been a setback in eroding this social malaise. Despite clear examples of protracted dowry demands at the slightest excuse, according to the court, customary articles given to the bridegroom's relatives at the time of marriage or during the birth of a child will not come within the ambit of dowry under the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961.

Reports in the media have also clearly pointed to the prevalence of the practice all over the country - from a phenomenon once believed to be restricted to the north of the country. Communities across the country have within their system of rituals and customs managed to accommodate dowry as a crucial custom defining the alliance. Ridiculously low rates of prosecution against the criminals, pressure on families to get their daughters married off at the first sight of an eligible groom, loud whispers of dowry deaths and harassment allegations, have not stopped criminal families from getting their sons married off again and again with newer and fresher dowries. Thus, while getting rid of a non-milking cow (the wife) for not getting enough dowry, and behind the façade of accidental deaths, the horror is that most families have actually gotten away with not just the crime but another cash rich alliance.

In the midst of poverty, boys continue to demand a price at birth, even as girls are unwelcome in their paternal households, and become even more vulnerable as they step in to their matrimonial home.

]]> When India's Resources Mobilize to Save a Girl Child http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/05/05/when-indias-resources-mobilize-save-a-girl-child 2008-05-07T12:40:00+00:00 2008-05-07T13:31:21+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh Can you imagine India's resources mobilizing to save a girl child? It is not impossible when you come to think of it. For twenty-four straight hours the country came to a virtual standstill when a two year-old girl fell in to the shaft of a borewell in a small village close to Agra in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Something similar had happened with a little boy from Haryana two years back and the nation had watched his rescue with mixed feelings of horror and hope. Two years later - though not wiser from the experience - similar incidents have occurred with alarming regularity. But while little Prince's (the boy from Haryana) ordeal did end happily, others have not been so lucky. And then suddenly there is yet more news of another child who accidentally falls in to yet another unmarked borewell shaft. This time it is a little girl. At a time when the country finds itself embarrassed by the imbalanced child and adult sex ratios from across the states and the government struggles to implement one policy after the other to plug the problem, for the cynic in us the scenes of the nation's resources being utilized to save one little girl were dramatically poetic. The armed forces were there and so was the local administration, the media and the entire community.

And then we are rudely awakened from this poetic reverie by the jarring sounds of two sets of parents squabbling over a child swap at a Chennai hospital. Both sets of parents are laying claim to the boy child and neither is willing to accept the girl as theirs. Simply put, while the fortunate boy has two possible families, the girl has already been orphaned - a fate not quite different from scores of abandoned girls in the country. Ironically, in a country where the religious divide is obviously evidenced so frequently it hardly seems to matter to either of the parents - one a Hindu and the other a Muslim - as long as what they take home is the boy. A DNA test will prove the paternity for both the children, but for the girl, the ordeal has only just begun. She is bound to face discrimination at every step of her life henceforth.

Apart from the denial of education - with boys invariably enjoying priority in most matters - and nutrition, health care and nurturing, the probability of the girl being married off at a very early age to shift the "burden" on to the husband is also high. And this invariably pushes her in to the cycle of early pregnancy, unsafe sex with the spouse (who would be much older), multiple pregnancies and the absence of healthcare facilities exponentially raising her vulnerability to STIs. What can one expect from a family being forced to bring up a clearly unwanted child? And that continues to be the manner in which little baby girls continue to be welcomed in many households.

And even as the passionately angry Minister for Women and Child Welfare claimed that parents who abandon their girls "are fools," the fact is that for many parents it's better to be a fool now than suffer later. Besides, it is the ministry that really systemized girl child abandonment by introducing the controversial palna (cradle) scheme, in which the government pledged to raise abandoned girl children.

The Anti-Dowry Act (1961) has been in place for a long time. Yet, the act of giving and taking dowry has become so inherently important to marriages in the guise of "gifting" that not only are very few cases registered but also they are registered only in retrospect when crimes are committed against the bride at her matrimonial home.

To add insult to an already injured women's rights agenda, the Supreme Court in a recent judgement only served to further legally entrench dowry by stating that gifts given by the wife's side to the husband's family even after the marriage, like at the time of child birth or other such ceremonies, did not constitute dowry. This is extremely important because dowry deaths do not always happen within the first few years of marriage and dowry harassment follows a continuous pattern into decades of marriage. With instances of dowry harassment continuing even after two decades of marriage, the judgement is a clear case of misinterpretation of dowry. The unending demands and torture for dowry have manifest in dowry deaths, suicides and mental and physical agony for the victims as the penalty for non-compliance by the girl's family. And this is despite the existence of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA) enacted in 2006.

While laws exist against domestic violence, there are very few convictions because they continue to be treated as personal matters that need to be resolved behind closed doors of the home rather than brought in to the public domain. And while the husband carries no such restrictions on himself it becomes the burden of the victim to also ensure that the family honor is not sullied even as the abuse continues. Moreover, with huge age gaps between the husband and wife (since girls are often married off much earlier) not only is it considered correct for the husband to use violence to "discipline" his wife but the child bride is hardly equipped to stand up to this violence in any way.

And though there are laws that prevent child marriages its prevalence and practice is evident from the presence of innumerable elected ministers and politicians at mass marriages where minor girls have been married off. The traditional beliefs that guide social realities, the complacency that steers the government machinery and the fatalistic mindset that keeps the general populace alive means that the struggle to change the status of women and the girl child is long, slow and peppered with obstacles. Statistics point to a crime against women every three minutes: with a sexual harassment every 53 minutes and a dowry death every 77 minutes, laws clearly are failing to protect women and their rights.

]]> Shifting the Blame onto Victims http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/04/18/shifting-the-blame-onto-victims 2008-04-18T13:51:21+00:00 2008-04-18T12:44:43+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh Latest reports by India's National Crime Records Bureau found a seven-fold increase in rape cases between 1971 and 2006. But the agencies that should ensure safe environments for women make excuses for perpetrators and resort to moral policing rather than finding ways to make women safer.

]]> Rape is perhaps the only crime that carries with it immense social implications for the victim -- making even the process of seeking justice an arduous fight not just against the aggressor but against the entire system and the society within which the judicial system functions. The concepts of feminine virtue and honor have turned entrenched beliefs into unwritten codes of conduct. It takes an extremely brave woman not just to fight for justice in the face of threats from the rapist but also go against what are believed to be the basic tenets of a woman's existence. Here in India, it is not uncommon to hear that "[a woman's] virtue once lost can never be retrieved." So the underlying caution is that even if rape is a crime, it is foolishness for women to report it and expose themselves again.

According to the latest report by India's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) -- the body responsible for maintaining these records post-independence -- based on the statistics available in 2006, between 1971 and 2006 rape cases have shown a seven-fold increase. During the same time frame, murder incidents had just doubled, and other violent crimes, like dacoity and rioting, had actually declined by almost 16% during the period.

What makes the situation even thornier is that seventy-five percent of the aggressors in the rapes were known to the victims. And with a quarter of the victims being minors, the trend clearly points to an extremely dangerous situation that continues to remain unaddressed. Just last year, of the 581 rape cases registered in 2007, a shocking 98.28 per cent were committed by persons known to the victims.

While some may argue that this huge increase could be due to the expanded reach of the media and its reporting capabilities, the increase in the number of reported instances of rape and the reality that until recently marital rape was not considered a crime against women, we can't forget that there are still many cases of rape that continue to go unaccounted for. Crimes against minors or victims from modest socio-economic backgrounds and crimes perpetrated by the state itself or by relatives of the victim still tend to be invisible crimes. Marital rape even today continues to go unreported because of the manner in which marriage defines the social duties and consequent demands that can be made of a wife -- making refusal of sex grounds for violence against the wife for not performing her primary job in the marriage.

Recently, a young British girl was raped and murdered in the rave beach of Goa, causing a storm in both the countries involved. While the Indian authorities were blamed for trying to hush up the case in the narcotics-rich beach city, in London the public crucified the mother for her irresponsible behavior. But does bad parenting justify a rape and murder? Despite the cultural divide, the argument is strikingly similar to one oft used in the Indian context: that women, dress "inappropriately," call for unwanted attention, which turns into teasing, molestation, sexual harassment or assault.

And the comments have come from no less than the Chief Justice of Karnataka, who blamed the "immodest dressing" of women as the reason behind the increasing crimes against women. The police in the national capital had come up with an equally bizarre handbook on "dos" and "don'ts" for women living in Delhi in the aftermath of sexual assaults on them. Again, the major concern revolved around the way the women were attired. Instead of providing a safer environment for women, it is the very agencies responsible for women's protection that resort to moral policing, shifting the onus of women's own safety onto themselves, and make excuses for the violators instead of finding ways to secure the environment and punish the perpetrators.

According to NCRB's statistics, every hour 18 women become victims of a crime, of which at least two are victims of a rape. Evidently, as rape statistics have shown a rise, so have other crimes against women with even cases of dowry -- the "gifting" of money and other household items by the bride's family to the bridegroom's -- and dowry-related deaths and suicides recording a rise each year and spreading to states that once did not have the practice. Not only is the demand for dowry not seen as a crime (despite existing legislation forbidding it) but the groom's value also increases exponentially depending upon the family's assets and the groom's educational qualifications and professional background.

While it's true that the lack of convictions in most of these crimes is also responsible for the impunity with which the crimes are committed, the deeply entrenched perceptions of women as property with no sexual autonomy also work to institutionalize the manner in which women are treated. Little boys learn to use expletives focused on women of the household as the initiation in to manhood, reflecting how central the sexual morality of women is in these cultural set-ups. While violence against women is also rooted in women's economic position -- considering that seventy percent of the global poor are actually women -- if mindset and perceptions need to change, then policies must emphatically support women's empowerment and should engage men and their attitudes as much as women.

]]> The Trade: Guns for Vasectomies http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/04/04/the-trade-guns-for-vasectomies 2008-04-04T13:40:21+00:00 2008-04-04T12:36:48+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh In the Madhya Pradesh state of India, the administration is offering men guns in exchange for vasectomies. But in choosing to meet targets rather than educating communities, the administration is hardening stereotypes of manliness, placing communities in even more vulnerable positions.

]]> What could a vasectomy and a gun possibly have in common (if one ignores the culturally specific double entendres it conjures up when delving on issues of manhood)? Not much in some parts of the world and yet the highest form of trade-off in certain parts of the world.

Owning property, weapons and women have for long been signs of success (not necessarily in that order) in various subcultures of the subcontinent. That is why even a war-ravaged country like Afghanistan, submerged under the pile of duplicated, second-hand weapons offloaded or manufactured along the border, has not quite escaped the temptations that the imagery poses, even as warlords flaunt their assortment of guns and women (mostly young children) in a vulgar display of wealth, affluence, social status and an associated political prestige all rolled in one. But then there is also the common perception -- the clichéd image of the country -- that contributes and feeds the belief and the Rambo-esque imagery of "Afghanistan's unending history of war and weapons." But what about a country like India?

In a traditional culture with a rigid division of duties where men earn and women nurture, female infertility is seen as a curse that women have to endure. With infertility for women comes ostracism and a life of loneliness, even as male infertility strangely finds its victims in women as well. Often women have had to carry the burden of their spouses' inability to help conceive and so complex are the images of manhood, virility and fertility that it manifests itself in a complete denial of a man's inability to be fertile. Concepts of manliness are so acutely woven in to the male psyche from a very early age that while men carry the pressures of that imagery women bear the consequences of it.

Besides, with the population growth rate in India having trebled post-independence, who would question the Indian man's fertility? And yet with food security becoming an increasing concern in this century the Indian government has found itself struggling to control the growth rate of almost 1.5 per cent a year by lowering the birth rate per couple from the current five.

It is in this scenario that the success of the model of "guns-for-vasectomies" in one of the districts of the central state of Madhya Pradesh seems a particularly dangerous trend. Vasectomies as a mode for male sterilization were found unpopular in this dacoit-infested region, as men feared that a vasectomy would affect their sexual potency by making them weak -- which was a tremendous sacrifice in a region where bandits brandishing guns have defined male perceptions of manhood, literally as the epitome of the alpha male. So the administration chose to compensate. Instead of going through the slower and more arduous tools of community outreach and trying to break myths, smash stereotypical representations and fracture fallacies they took a quicker method. While convincing men to give up on one symbol of their manhood they made up by providing them with another symbol of manhood - a gun for their fertility. Hence, the acquisition of a gun license has been made much simpler for those opting for the medical procedure.

The context is that Shivpuri - the district where this model is being practiced - appears to be a microcosm for most of India and the region's problems, all of which are related to poverty. Apart from the scarcity of basic amenities, even returns from the land are not enough to feed single families as larger families over the years have meant relentless division of the in to smaller plots of land. Like many regions of the country, the increase in birth rates has found a solution in higher levels of sex selection. Women continue to go through one pregnancy to the next even as medical services fail to keep pace with their needs. The giving and taking of dowry are accepted social practices and the male children are welcome even as girls are seen as an economic burden to be shifted on to the marital home as early as possible. And as a cruel joke guns seems to have become the answer to tackle the problems.

Guns have been a part of many social traditions in the country. Guns are used to celebrate functions like weddings (with more than random accidental deaths of even the groom or other revellers); guns are used to settle disputes, guns are used to protect the family honor (very often vested in the reputation of the female members of the household). And now guns are being used to control birth rates. A young school girl died in the state of Uttar Pradesh accidentally at the hands of her headmaster's loaded gun.

There already have been incidents recently, of children increasingly using guns to settle their own disputes having either watched their fathers use them or with the knowledge of the presence of a firearm at home. Another Australian girl was raped and killed by her stalker in the pilgrim town of Vrindavan recently. And even as the administration makes lofty claims of their power to cancel gun licenses as and when required, the truth is that the damage might well be done. The government has sent out a lethal cocktail of mixed messages that legitimizes the use of violence.

In choosing to meet targets rather than actually educating communities, the administration is hardening stereotypes of manliness which not only places women in even more vulnerable positions but also places the entire community in a volatile situation where they might end up looking down each others' barrels at the slightest provocation.

]]> No Room for Orthodoxy in HIV Prevention http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/03/24/no-room-for-orthodoxy-in-hiv-prevention-in-india 2008-03-24T13:46:21+00:00 2008-07-14T04:55:15+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh The HIV epidemic in India needs to be fought by accessible testing, lessening stigma, widespread education, and needle exchange programs, but above all, it needs to be fought by a humane and scientific prevention program coming from the government.

]]> Two couples from the district of Guntur in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India -- despite their limited education and conservative upbringing -- managed to send out a powerful message to dispel the myths surrounding HIV by opting for pre-marital HIV testing with the support of their families.

One of the young men getting married is a truck driver -- believed to be one of the high risk groups in the country for the virus. With ninety percent of the youth in three districts of the region positively inclined to such tests, the future of controlling the virus looks bright -- as long as these young people are not stonewalled by conservative community elders when legislation on the subject comes up or the movement for such testing does gain momentum. The NGO involved in the initiative hopes to make pre-marital HIV testing mandatory.

The subject of sex education in schools already has been stonewalled in many parts of the country. The tussle has been narrowed down to the issue of talking about the act itself with children. The recent incident of early adolescent street children in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata molesting a woman in broad daylight like it was a community game or the burning of a twelve-year-old girl by two fourteen-year-old boys because she resisted there attempts at rape are scary enough for parents (if not other stakeholders) to start taking this issue more seriously. Sex education can arm children, adolescents and young adults with information that prepares them to not just be sexually safer and healthy but also to help them deal with the growing awareness of their own sexuality in a responsible manner -- and delay their first sexual encounter to a time when they feel both physically and mentally equipped to deal with the consequences.

Any "unorthodox" attempts at dealing with HIV and other STIs or pregnancy and family planning related issues have over the years met with resistance. For instance, several years ago, a movement to introduce condom vending machines for prison inmates of Tihar (the largest prison complex in South Asia and located in the national capital) was enough to rattle many people.

More recently, several agencies have been contemplating making clean syringes available for intravenous drug users (IDUs), considering the risk sharing syringes poses for HIV infection. If the argument here gets reduced to condoning or condemning drug use the price we end up paying will be with more new HIV infections and precious time lost in actually combating the issue.

Changes like these in strategy need to be considered if we don't want to end up taking three steps back for every step forward in dealing with communities on such volatile issues surrounding sexual and reproductive health. The region has already suffered the consequences of sex selection, reflected in the abysmal sex ratio in India, and is a reflection of foot dragging strategies over the past decade and more. And the result? In many districts of the country, there are now fewer than 700 girls for every thousand boys, with a situation not that different to the one in China.

Even tough India found cheer recently in the fact that the actual HIV infections were not as high as estimated in early 2007 by some international agencies. But complacency would be disastrous, since each unaccounted for infection holds the potential of another. And at close to three million people living with HIV the number still is very high.

Information is really at the heart of the solution to prevent any new infections and to give people living with HIV a more fulfilling life inspite of and with the virus. With stigma and discrimination the core obstacles faced by most positive persons and their families, even the idea of getting tested comes with its own set of complications. Violence and ostracism become the social fallouts of this medical condition. Not only do widows of HIV-positive men get through out of their marital homes but children from households with an HIV-positive member have lower enrollment and higher drop out rates. Education should be the first line of defense against the spread of the virus but often educational access is compromised by the virus itself. Besides, for information to reach its intended audience what needs to be kept in mind is the large mass of the illiterate population. And hence dissemination of information through media resources other than the written one becomes absolutely imperative and using local tools like folk theatre, music, cinema, community gatherings, street plays and puppet shows probably would be more popular methods of ensuring attendance and acceptance.

But more than everything else, what is required is support from the government: support to make testing services more accessible for those willing and ensuring that government services themselves are not discriminatory to the infected persons and their families.

The danger with bills like the PEPFAR is that they do find support amidst the more conservative policy planners in the country -- which is a dangerous trend when it comes to dealing with issues like HIV/AIDS. For instance, an earlier administration in India actually followed a deliberate policy of shifting focus of AIDS prevention campaigns to sexual abstinence and marital fidelity, relegating condoms to a distant third going so far as even removing condom advertisements from state-run television networks in the name of decency and to keep in line with their own orthodox policies. The irony is that in India the virus has confined itself to a sexual triangle of poor, male migrant workers, the sex workers they visit and the wives they leave back home. So any bill carrying provisions like the PEPFAR in effect excludes from its group of beneficiaries a substantial portion of the high risk populations in the country.

If HIV has been taken up as one of the most serious concerns of the 21st century, then to deny certain groups access to treatment and funds for treatment is an infringement on basic human rights. Universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment is the immediate need. Access to all kinds of healthcare invariably suffers from bureaucratic hiccups and to have an additional set of prerequisites before the treatment and care can be made available to the target groups is both inhuman and criminal. In its current stage the epidemic calls for streamlining not just government but extra national processes to be able to achieve universal access to lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment, including access to second-line therapies if the fight against HIV has to be won both in terms of time and the number of people it reaches.

]]> Devil in the Details? http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/03/19/devil-in-the-details 2008-03-19T13:33:20+00:00 2008-03-19T12:33:52+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh PEPFAR includes a huge amount of money with a burdensome and ideological list of "do's" and "don'ts." Haven't we seen this before? Read this latest post in our International Women's Health Salon.

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This post is part of our online salon: A New Agenda For Girls' and Women's Health and Rights, co-hosted with UN Dispatch.

My concern really would be with how deeply will the cultural, regional sub-context be taken in to account while implementing the PEPFAR Bill. The way it looks to me with so many clauses and sub-clauses it appears already to have a target group in mind at the cost of keeping certain groups beyond its reach as a form of 'disciplining' for not adhering in the first place (in the last five years!). And what worries me is that such a huge amount of money will go in to sticking to the "dos and don'ts" of the Bill rather than reaching substantially larger groups of people. Haven't we already seen this before? In conflict zones like Afghanistan ... in Iraq ... where so much money has gone yet women live lives not very different from the previous decade; and of course much too often also reflected in policies taken up by each of our own governments?

Countries in Asia and Africa already suffer from the burden of too many cultural practices and unfair, gender imbalanced value systems (the experience of development workers will show) which cannot be challenged but have to be worked around slowly and deliberately. When one invokes the prostitution pledge I wonder what happens to girls who have been unwittingly lured in to the sex trade in the first place and are unable to return back to their own communities (even when rescued) out of fear of ostracism or the 'shame' that they bring to the family. Thus, they are often compelled to return to the very life they fight to leave.

These are common narratives for almost every girl in the business and it is these narratives that make up the bulk of the sex workers in these countries. So are these young lives to be deprived of medical care and attention and continue to face persistent stigma and discrimination, (apart from the violence they endure) simply because they reconciled to sex work being the only economically viable means of survival. Even as local groups and communities fight social values to allow some sense of respect to these women in introducing this clause what in effect is being communicated is that they women do not deserve care and support because of the work they do. If that is not discriminatory behaviour then what is? What about men who might contract the virus from the sex worker? Are they also to be denied the aid? And finally down the same chain what about the spouse who contracts it from the husband? In countries like India and patriarchal set-ups such blanket bans only help to perpetuate the practices (which groups have spent years fighting) that while a woman (in this case a sex worker) can be punished for her trade (by limiting her accessibility to medical relief) men correspondingly do not have to bear that burden. So in condemning it for women it carries legitimacy for men -- an extremely disastrous situation in societies where women are socially and politically disenfranchised.

Married women form a very large component of the HIV infected population mainly because of the fact that girls are married very early to men much older to them (and often already sexually active). In the absence of information on the subject -- since sex itself is a taboo subject as is the use of contraceptives in such traditional, patriarchal set-ups where the value of women is judged by the number of male children they bear -- they very rarely are equipped to protect themselves from infections.

More often than not since women in such set ups have very little access to information, groups working on contraception are also the information providers on HIV/AIDS especially since these are subjects that women themselves are hesitant to talk about. Pre- and post-natal care become the entry points to discuss other issues like reproductive and sexual health, HIV/AIDS within these communities and even abortion as an Family Planning tool is commonly used especially in countries like India where it has been legalized for long.

What would be the implications of the Global Gag Rule here? For many women in the lack of any other access to information on family planning (since many traditional families even condemn the idea) it is very often midwives who also act as the carriers of information on various issues like HIV. Again with women contracting the virus so often from their spouses and coming to know of it during a pregnancy the GGR in effect is snatching from them their only access to information and help on the subject, especially since they are often better positioned to prevent new infections among women and youth - the two most vulnerable groups currently.

Besides, to me the hypocrisy of it all lies in the fact that how can something that can not be implemented in the host country (as the GGR can not be applied to US organizations as it raises the issue of unconstitutionality) be force-fed to other nations and yet be used as a position to prevent funding abroad? Is there really no underlying conscientious compulsion to link domestic policies and their enforcement with the moral position beyond the national borders -- particularly since morality has such an important role to play by way of 'abstinence' earlier and the continuing 'anti-prostitution pledge.'

My concern is that clauses and sub-clauses in programmes that fail to take in to account the specifics of the cultural and social milieu where they need to be implemented is a way of ensuring their failure. Flexibility needs to be at the core of these programmes. But then whom are we attempting to impact ultimately? All those who require this care or simply those (women specifically) who have made morally correct choices. And where are the definitions of these morally correct choices emanating from?

And this is what makes it imperative that the language of aid does not enjoy such ambiguity that it becomes more a tool to deny groups rather than be more inclusive.

]]> Muslim Leaders Defend Marriage by Choice http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/03/10/muslim-leaders-defend-marriage-by-choice 2008-03-13T13:48:00+00:00 2008-03-13T12:51:43+00:00 Deepali Gaur Singh In India, women -- viewed as either the husband's or father's property -- cannot make decisions about their own marriages. But a new decision made by Muslim bodies and Islamic scholars says that under Sharia law, a woman cannot be married against her will.

]]> In traditional societies like India, arranged marriage is as inherent to the social fabric of the nation as is the institution of marriage itself. This is why, often, choosing one's own partner constitutes the worst form of rebellion against a parent, and, for women, the urn-bearers of the family reputation, a choice that crosses the line from rebellion to dishonor upon the family.

Even celluloid love stories of the past decade have shown a shift from the rebellious love stories of the eighties to more accommodating, docile renditions where instead of challenging the system -- the parents and the arranged marriage -- you go along with the system, embracing ‘tradition' in all its splendor. But unfortunately, reel life has not aped real, or vice versa, which is evident in the numerous violent incidents against couples who chose to challenge the traditional shackles of marriage and the unwritten code for ‘acceptable' alliances. These unacceptable alliances have been met with violence against the couple, whether it is the forceful confinement of the girl by her own family, threats of (and actual) violence against the couple, panchayat decrees ordering the stripping of the woman or female relatives of the ostracized couple, murders and suicides, or murder in the garb of suicide. And this is a trend that appears to be as common in urban as in rural India - and even overseas, as evidenced in kidnappings and killings linked to marriages amongst the expatriate Asian community.

In the Indian context (and the larger South Asian context of countries that are similarly tradition), with women in general and girls in particular hardly enjoying the space to make life changing decisions themselves, it is hardly surprising that curbs on a woman's right to choose whom to marry manifest themselves in a multitude of ways, irrespective of the religion they conform to. So while child marriages are brazenly practiced, marriages to pay off family debts do exist, forced marriages are employed to prevent girls from marrying the men of their choice, widows are coerced in to marriages with the brother-in-law (or other male relatives) or into polyandrous marriages and such seemingly endless situations, women - viewed as either the husband's or father's property - do not have the choice to make decisions on their own marriage.

Religion, culture and value systems and the abundant use of prevailing customs in many parts of the country thwart the protection of this right of choice to marry. And the noise is not always only about inter-religious marriages but even over marriages that violate caste or sub-caste distinctions and specific cultural, regional sanctions. Additionally, those wanting to get out of a bad marriage through divorce invite further violence from not just the marital home but often from the paternal side too. And even as 'honor' crimes occur against women, honor killings themselves are not listed as a crime against women and hence, continue unabated in various forms and disguises as an inherent part of any patriarchal structure.

It is in this context that Muslim bodies and Islamic scholars at a meeting, in the national capital of New Delhi unanimously decided that "in Islam, the girl has every right to marry the boy of her choice and her parents cannot impose their decision on her since the Sharia (Muslim law) gives the girl right to choose her future husband." This meeting, attended, amongst others, by members of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), and Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband under the banner of Islamic Fiqh Academy (IFA) made truly a land mark decision - even if it remains to be tested.

It was further reiterated that Islam does not condone forced marriages and if a girl is forced in to such an alliance she has every right to declare her marriage null and void "because such a marriage will also be against Sharia."

While the Sharia law decision is not legally binding, and Sharia is open to interpretation, the decision is an important and progressive way of looking at women's rights within the Muslim context. It has not been disputed as yet -- though that have more to do with its non-binding nature and that it was within the Indian context.

What makes this particularly important is that not only are girls (irrespective of their religious faiths) married off very early, but they are also often married to men much older than they are. No matter the age of the girl's husband, it's an extremely dangerous situation: the girl's education is aborted (for those of whom who even get an education) and they are thrust in to the adult demands of a marriage when their bodies might not be ready for the same.

With the long-standing, rigid, social demands for women in place, any challenge to them is bound to extract its price. With the denial of choice for women disguised in the elaborate garb of tradition, it is decisions like this - like using the Sharia to actually hand over agency to the women especially with regard to choices that impact their bodily autonomy and their life - that might prove to be the most sustainable and have the deepest impact.

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