Fights against AIDS: Tatas get thumbs up

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Fights against AIDS: Tatas get thumbs up

CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 2003 07:43:18 PM ]

WASHINGTON: A global business coalition backed by some of the world's most

powerful movers and shakers recognised India's flagship enterprise Tata Iron

and Steel with an award for community-based awareness programmes on AIDS at

a glittering dinner in Washington on Wednesday.

But while Tatas got the thumbs up, activists railed against the Indian

government's tendency to wave the problem away. AIDS will destroy economies

and countries unless the world wakes up to the threat, speaker after

powerful speaker warned, amid widespread fears that India is ignoring the

scale of the problem.

The gathering for the black-tie event was indicative of the fear that is

sweeping through the western corporate world and the US administration, and

contrasted sharply with the rather blasé outlook in India. In a remarkable

confluence of interests, some of the world's best known

businessmen-executives (CEOs of Mercedes Benz, Viacom and Coca Cola among

them) sat with Washington's makers and breakers including Secretary of State

Colin , Senators and Congressmen, to talk about the issue.

The award for Tatas was the one brief heady moment for India's effort to

meet the challenge of AIDS before the scale of the threat and the issue of

government inattention swept away the congratulatory mood. The AIDS threat

was so big that whatever Tisco is doing " is just a drop in the ocean, "

Chairman Ratan Tata, who was here specially to receive the award, said in

his brief remarks.

On the margins of the event, activists and well-wishers panned the Indian

government for failing to recognize the challenge. " The Indian government

wastes its time in useless debates and flip-flop policy, " fumed Congressman

Jim McDermott, who is also a physician and who first recognised the problem

during his initial visits to India in the early 1990s. " They have been

hobbling along for a decade while the disease is eating away at the vitals. "

By sheer coincidence, the event was foreshadowed by a front-paged story the

same day in the Washington Post reporting in scary detail the spread of AIDS

in India. The Tamil Nadu-datelined story described a whole AIDS colony in a

small town and said " such scenes are increasingly common in parts of India,

signalling the start of the long-awaited breakout of the disease from

traditional high-risk groups such as prostitutes and drug users into the

general population. "

McDermott and other Indophiles warn that should the Indian government and

industry continue to take the AIDS threat lightly, it could devastate Indian

economy. AIDS is already wiping out the productive work force in many

countries. The mining industry in southern Africa, for example, has some

30,000 HIV positive workers in a 100,000 strong workforce.

In an eloquent keynote, Secretary of State , who attended the event at

Washington's Kennedy Centre between trips to South America and Cambodia,

warned that AIDS is no more just a health care issue but " it's a foreign

policy issue...It is every bit as much a crisis as Iraq. "

" AIDS...is an insidious and relentless foe -- more destructive than any

army, any conflict, any weapon of mass destruction...In the three hours or

so we have spent here tonight, 1,000 people around the world will have died

of AIDS and over 1,700 people will have become infected, " he warned.

Yet, activists say, both the Indian government and businesses remain

nonchalant about the threat, preferring to spend time disputing western

estimates ( " as if it makes a difference whether only 15 million die of AIDS

instead of the 25 million projected by CIA, " ). One expert said Indians was

resorting to the mythology of communal immunity (claiming Indians were less

susceptible to AIDS) while shirking the fight.

Activists hope that Wednesday's award to Tata Steel will at least spur other

private companies to act on the AIDS front even if the government remains

blasé. Tisco MD Muthuraman also blamed the media, including The Times of

India, for abdicating responsibility to raise awareness of the danger AIDS

is posing.

" I suppose it is not a sexy enough subject, " Muthuraman remarked after

criticising the frippery that he says has begun to characterise the Indian

media.

The Global Business Council, which gave the award to Tata this year, was

formed in 1998 to persuade companies to get involved. The council now has

114 members - Pepsico, American Express, British Petroleum, de Beers, Nike,

Citigroup, Bayer, Pfizer among them - and is led by Mercedes Benz CEO Jurgen

Schrempf.

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