AIDS fight: India, Inc. tests negative

[Guest guest]

AIDS fight: India, Inc. tests negative

VIKRAM DOCTOR

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ MONDAY, DECEMBER 01, 2003 12:31:33 AM ] MUMBAI: Harshada

Patil, a deputy manager looking after social welfare at Bharat Petroleum

Corporation (BPCL), is blunt in her description of the attitude towards HIV/AIDS

of some senior corporate managers.

" They aren't really concerned because they say if some people get AIDS and die,

there are plenty of other people to take their place. "

According to this mindset, Indian companies, and not just public sector

undertakings, are already hugely overstaffed, and anyway, if there's so much

unemployment in the country that hundreds are willing to trek from Bihar to

Mumbai for some measly railway jobs, what sort of impact can HIV/AIDS really

have on Indian companies?

Such views should not be taken as an indication of BPCL's actual HIV/AIDS

policy. In fact, the PSU giant has one of the most comprehensive corporate

HIV/AIDS programmes in the country. BPCL has run extensive awareness programmes

for its employees both on its prevention and to sensitise them about working

with HIV positive co-workers.

Ms Patil says there is no question of such workers being asked to leave. On the

contrary, full support and counselling is given to them and their families. She

adds that the company's health scheme will cover the costs of their treatment

even extending to anti-retroviral treatment — which few other companies do. And

outside its own workforce, BPCL conducts HIV/AIDS prevention programmes in

communities surrounding some of its main factories.

Few other Indian companies may go as far as BPCL, but there's no doubt that the

level of HIV/AIDS awareness is far higher in the corporate world than it was as

recently as two years back. On World AIDS Day then, looking for companies with

proper HIV/AIDS programmes, only a few could be found like Mahindra & Mahindra,

Larsen & Toubro, Tata Group companies, Bajaj Auto, Glaxo and SAIL. Now, many

others like Cadbury, Castrol, Escorts, Eveready, Godrej, Gujarat Ambuja, Hero

Honda, IndianOil, Marico, Modicare, Mukand, Ranbaxy and Reliance can be added.

At a more macro level, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has tied up

with the Global Business Coalition for HIV/AIDS (GBC) to increase awareness of

this issue in the industry. The GBC also recognised the efforts of one company

in particular, Tisco, with a special international award for its comprehensive

programme, which stretches from its workforce to the communities surrounding

Jamshedpur and even truckers bringing products into the city.

And if all this wasn't enough, the grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

of $100m (later doubled to $200m), which was announced in person by Bill Gates

in India , focused the industry's attention on HIV/AIDS in a way that nothing

else could have. Corporate conferences have been held on HIV/AIDS, corporate

heads deliver solemn speeches about it at the click of a Powerpoint resentation

and as one NGO worker in the field notes, a paragraph on the company's HIV/AIDS

policy has become almost mandatory in most annual reports.

" When I started in this field, I had to really persuade companies to let us

conduct awareness programmes, " says Nidhi Dubey, programme officer on workplace

interventions at Avert, a joint project of the National AIDS Control

Organisation (NACO), USAID and the Government of Maharashtra. " Today, we have

lots of companies calling up asking us to come. "

So what's the problem? Only this: The programmes may be excellent, but the

reasons for their implementation still lack something. Talk to companies and it

becomes clear that overwhelmingly they see HIV/AIDS as a welfare issue, a

problem on the lines of drug or alcohol addiction. HIV/AIDS comes under the

corporate social responsibility (CSR) area, something that its generally agreed

that companies should be doing — but with the unspoken corollary, that

its not imperative, because it doesn't affect the bottomline.

" Companies aren't really taking responsibility for HIV/AIDS because they still

don't see it as something that could affect their productivity, " says Ms Dubey.

It's why the people actually dealing with the issues in companies are always the

welfare officers and rarely anyone more senior — outside CII conferences, that

is.

The idea that HIV/AIDS does not actually impact the bottomline is somewhat

short-sighted, as proven by international experience. HIV/AIDS has been

recognised to be a productivity issue since it targets exactly the most

productive sections of society — sexually-active adults in the age group of

18-45. Estimates by the United Nations Development Programme suggest that

HIV/AIDS has reduced the annual growth rate of GDP per capita around the world,

by nearly 0.06% below what it could have been in the absence of the disease.

In the most severely affected areas like parts of sub-Saharan Africa , where

nearly 8.8% of the population has the disease, the reduction in annual growth

rate may be nearly 0.15%. In some industries, like South Africa 's mining

industry, it's been estimated that as many as 30,000 miners are positive, out of

a total workforce of 100,000.

Multinationals in South Africa are reported to be hiring three people to fill

any post that becomes vacant in order to ensure that there's always someone to

do the job. Add on the effects of manhours lost in taking care of sick people

and less quantifiable issues like the social problems of huge number of families

losing the main breadwinners, and HIV/AIDS clearly emerges as a serious

productivity issue.

If Indian companies are still to see it this way, it's partly because of lack of

data. India is now estimated to be the country with the second-largest

population of HIV positive people and there are plenty of projections for how

bad it could get — one of the few work-related estimates done by a doctor at

Tata Tea suggests that in ten years time 2,280m manhours could be lost because

of the disease.

But there is still little hard data on the workplace impact of the disease, to

some extent a result of the strategy chosen early on in the campaign against

HIV/AIDS in India of focusing on the most high-risk groups.

" People have mostly looked at groups like truck drivers and commercial sex

workers, but not the workplace, " points out VR Jathar, director, CSR at the

Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI). That's why when the BCCI decided

to take up this issue, one of the first things it did was to commission a study

from PriceWaterhouse simply to see how many companies have HIV/AIDS

policies at all, and general corporate attitudes to the issue. The study,

conducted across HRD managers, welfare officials and some union officials as

well, is yet to be completed, but initials reports make for sombre reading

Despite the high-profile names backing HIV/AIDS as an issue, a very large part

of the corporate world is still to wake up to it. " 35% of respondents did not

consider HIV/AIDS to be an area of concern, " says Mr Jathar. " 31% had a

wait-and-watch policy. " He stresses that there are positive signs. " Over 60%

want to get information on HIV/AIDS, and most people surveyed said they were

willing to accept HIV positive people in the workplace. " But, the fact remains

that so

many years into the epidemic, over half the companies surveyed had no real

support for HIV positive workers.

In addition, it should be kept in mind that corporate efforts of whatever kind

do not touch on the huge informal workforce. The informal labour in industries

ranging from cinema or diamond-cutting to the migrant labour in agro-based

industries like sugar are even more at risk than the formal workforce, but

HIV/AIDS initiatives here are close to zero and likely to remain that way since

no one will take responsibility for them.

Despite this lack of hard data, there's no dearth of anecdotal evidence of the

impact the disease is having. Managers like BPCL's Ms Patil who have dealt with

the issue are generally frank about the incidence of the disease. " Its becoming

increasingly common right across our workforce, " says Ms Patil. The problem has

always been that the company doesn't know for sure, usually because the employee

doesn't either, until they fall sick and go to a company-linked

hospital for a check-up. " We tend to find out at the same time as the employee

does, " says Ms Patil.

Typically the disease has been thought of as impacting mostly blue-collar

workers, but increasingly its hitting managerial levels as well. " Real data is

even harder to get in this case, but we are getting reports of more white collar

workers who are infected, " says Mr Jathar. A welfare officer at a company who

asks not to be identified gives the example of a young manager in a regional

office who was recently diagnosed as positive — along with his wife and

children. Cases like this are why the company, which gave automatic counselling

to employees diagnosed positive, now gives it to family members as well.

The situation isn't entirely grim. The increasing number of HIV/AIDS initiatives

is encouraging and more organisations like BPCL are now focusing on workplace

interventions. Sensitisation programmes, whatever the motives behind them, are

proven to have a positive impact. Ms Patil reports that BPCL's programmes have

raised awareness of HIV/AIDS to the level that employees are now well aware that

its not a highly contagious disease and that there is no threat of working

alongside HIV positive employees. " In the few cases we

know, there has been a lot of support given to the employees, " she says.

All that needs to change is for companies to add increased emphasis to these

efforts by treating them not as welfare initiatives, but ones needed for the

company's future. As Mr Jathar says it's just a question of long-term planning.

" At the moment its probably true that in the short term HIV/AIDS will not have

much of an impact on a company's performance. But in the long run, as the

situation becomes worse and rates rise, it is bound to happen. Companies need to

start planning for that from today

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