Condoms@call centres: Why single them out?

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Condoms@call centres: Why single them out?

21 Sep 2008, 0110 hrs IST, Pallavi Srivastava,TNN

They are a familiar sight at railway stations and on college

campuses across India. Now condom vending machines may find a niche

in call centres too.

Earlier this week, the Andhra Pradesh State AIDS Control Society

(APSACS) announced that the authorities have asked call centres and

BPO companies to install condom vending machines. " This is underway.

The machines will be installed soon, " APSACS project director RV

Chandravadan told a news conference in Hyderabad. The Mumbai

District Aids Control Society (MDACS) had made a similar

announcement in June this year.

Campaigners for HIV awareness are cheering. But it's not a problem

solved, by any means. Chandravadan unwittingly underlined one of the

main hitches in the scheme when he declined to name companies and

share details of call centres.

He told journalists that IT companies would not want their names to

be made public as this could bring them a " bad name " . It was proof,

if any were needed, that for a majority of people, condom vending

machines continue to be both taboo subject and shameful object.

" Unfortunately, we connect condoms with immoral sex. This should

change, " says Dr Suniti , founding director of YRG Centre for

AIDS Research & Education, Chennai. Dr , who documented the

first case of HIV in India as far back as 1986, reportedly raised

the issue of rampant AIDS among " call centre Romeos " at an

international medical conference a few months ago. The retired

professor of microbiology emphasises that condom machines should be

installed wherever young people gather for any length of time. " They

are a high risk group, " she says.

It's an assertion few could dispute. That is why the authorities are

targeting call centres. MDACS, for instance, plans to install 3,000

condom machines in disparate locations over six months, in three

phases, the last of which will target call centres. " We are talking

to BPOs, " says Harish Pathak, additional project director at MDACS.

" Their lifestyle is potentially high-risk because they are likely to

be economically mature but socially immature. " Pathak explains that

this is largely because a call centre workforce is typically young

and 90% comprises sexually active people. They are relatively well-

off and have odd, anti-social hours of work.

It's a touchy issue because many night-shift workers challenge the

assumption the graveyard shift is fraught with sexual dangers.

Asmita Bhattacharya (name changed), a former call centre employee,

says, " Night is the day at call centers. Why single them out? Other

professions like advertising also have late hours. " She insists that

call centres have busy work routines and strict codes of conduct,

making it almost impossible for employees to indulge in anything,

except, well, work.

And yet the condoms-for-call-centres initiative may be leaving call

centres with an unsavoury reputation. Bhattacharya and other call

centre workers might well wonder at the impact of this growing link

between call centres and condom machines. Would it leave the call

centre saddled with the same unflattering image as the Hindi film

industry in the 1930s?

At the time, middle-class parents said cinema was not

a " respectable " profession. Could middle-class parents to do the

same with call centres, discouraging their children from joining the

industry, believing them to be hubs of depravity? The more

puritanical Indian, after all, holds condoms responsible for

encouraging youth to have casual sex.

The hub-of-depravity tag is one BPO officials are desperate to

avoid. " We have always said that it's not the call centre industry

that's prone to HIV. It's the youth that are prone, " says an

official of a Hyderabad-based BPO. The two state governments that

have made the condoms-for-call-centres connection, also insist they

never intended to stigmatise the industry.

" We don't want to say that they are irresponsible, " says Dr Pathak

of MDACS. " But more than 80% of HIV infections spread through sex,

and young adults are definitely more susceptible to it. " He builds

his argument by adding that within two months of Navratri — the time

of year when young men and women are socially permitted to mingle —

there is a 100% increase in the number of abortion cases in

Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Dr of YRG Centre believes condoms should be made as

accessible as sanitary napkins. She says youth awareness would go a

long way towards controlling the spread of HIV. " Today, 80-90% of

sex workers and truckers use condoms, because they have been

targeted, " she says. " On the other hand, nine out of 10 patients are

from other walks of life. In fact, 80% of the women registered with

us are housewives with a single partner. " Time, then, to present

packs of condoms alongside sanitary napkins?

(pallavi.srivastava@...)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Deep_Focus/Condomscall_centres_Why

_single_them_out/articleshow/3507910.cms