Letter to Health Minister and Chief Minister of Kerala State

[Guest guest]

Dear Chief Minister and Health Minister of Kerela state,

I am a lawyer from Delhi and I have been very pained to know that you have

issued directions that the HIV/AIDS work being done by the NGO called Maitreya,

and especially their work with sex workers be stopped forthwith by the stoppage

of the funds that they were receiving from the state for such HIV/AIDS work. I

agree that people who tout as leaders are not always the most intelectually

capable of human beings, so I am taking the trouble of educating you on a couple

of points that may just have elluded your politically inebriated greymass.

1. You and only you are responsible for the health of the people of your state.

You have failed in that job. This is so beacuse you have not brought most of

your poulation and especially sex workers into the health net, you are not

providing them with basic treatment and medication, your health infrastructure

is in shambles, and you are not providing them with the tools with which they

can priotect themselves from HIV and AIDS. This costs life, and because you are

responsible for these loss of life by the sheer criminal dint of your inaction,

you are commiting effective genocide.

2. You have been given money by the center to undertake HIV Intervention with

sex workers with the active participation of NGOs. You ahve received that money,

but have chosen to act in the manner you have because you do not belive taht sex

workers are human beings with human rights. You are effectively responsible for

the erosion of their dignity and their power to negotiate their own protection

is a state taht is criminally antagonistic to their very existence. This is

infecting them and causing their life to be imperiled. Your action is like the

selective culling of a group of people which is the most apt definition of

gencide ever created.

3. You may not be aware, but with the absence of a cure, and because your

incompetencve has made treatment a matter of dream and not reality, NGOs have

been forced to step in and do teh job that in reality you should have been doing

in the first place. But the other side of this coin is that NGOs can work only

if the they are protected from harassment from the state [headed by you

incidentally] Also it is the protection and promotion of the rights of those

most at risk that is the only sure antidote to the HIV menace. An understanding

that is expected of you, but which you surely seem to be lacking.

4. And real cheapskates that you are, what do you do instead. You have the gall

to actually cast aspersions on people who are working with sexworkers in spite

of the problems you create for them and bring about false allegations against

them. But Mr. Ministers please remember, if you had succeded in giving all

eligible adults a job, then there would be no need for sexworkers to sell their

bodies. If you had given everyone education and social security, then people

would not have to seek security in sex work. The fact that sex workers are there

and are forced to do what they do is indication of the failure of your system

and your selves. They are the victims of the system that you have created. It is

a shame that you can after that have the audacity to victimise them back. Shame

to you is all that I can say!

Mr. Chief Minister, there was a time not that long back when your honesty and

your vigour was a source of inspiration to young Indians like me, who were on

the lookout for some political faces that could be the saving grace of our

political class. I am sorry to say that today you are another one of the

nameless selfish polititians who are nothing short of being parasites. I hope

that you would find time from politics one of these days to look into the mirror

and try and salvage a bit of the humanity that you did possess in the past.

Mr. Healt Minister, I am sure your politicking and scoring cookie points would

have cost the lives of a few dozen more in the last few days. If you can ever

get over the elation of this great deed of yours, maybe you would get around to

releasing the funds that is required for HIV work, no matter how antithetical

that is to your basic instincts of having the last word at the cost of human

lives. I hope you would cease to be minister for a while and become a human

being.

I am posting this letter also on many public lists, so that they all know that

you have done things that you should not have done. But more so because I do not

think a mail from a member of the public is either read by you, or that you are

bothered in any way by it. As I understand it, only human beings are bothered by

human pain and sufferings.

Sadly yours

Aditya Bondyopadhyay

E-mail: <adit_bond_2@...>

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