India in AIDS’ grip
Muhammad Saad

Sujatha Rao, Director General of India’s National AIDS Control Organisation told reporters in New Delhi on April 23, 2006, that 5.21 million Indians suffer from AIDS (“5.206 million Indians are HIV infected”, April 23, 2006, Sify.com [accessed April 24, 2006]).She admitted that data on people dying from the HIV AIDS was not available.
The released data related to estimates for the year 2005. In year 2004, 5.13 million people suffered from AIDS. Thus, there has been increase of 0.08 million people in number of people suffering from AIDS.
Earlier, India’s Union Health Minister, wile addressing a gathering in connection with ‘Goonj’ awareness campaign, had warned, “India will be another Africa, if left to itself”. Goonj, is an intensive information, education and communication campaign, aimed at mass mobilisation initiative.
He expressed concern at fast increase in AIDS cases in India. Ramdass quoted Botswana ‘37 percent of whose population was suffering from the fatal virus and called for a need to put sustained efforts in place to fight the epidemic in India’.
India wants to surpass China and even the USA in technological progress. India’s optimism is based on a recent issue of Foreign Policy. In this issue, Yasheng Huang, associate professor at Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tarun Khanna, professor at Harvard Business School have said, “India is not outperforming China overall, but it is doing better in certain key areas and that success may enable it to catch up with and perhaps even overtake China” (<http://india.indymedia.org/en/2003/07/5649.shtml> [accessed March 2006]). Some other studies suggest that the both India and China will excel the USA as the two countries produce more engineering graduates every year than the USA.
While desiring to excel China and the USA, India should not ignore threatened impact of the AIDS on her economic growth. It is internationally assessed, that India would go bankrupt in next five years (“AIDS to hurt Indian biz in 5 yrs, says World Economic Forum”, Rediff.com, Samachar.com [accessed March 2006]). The earlier assessment was that India would go bankrupt in 10 years because of AIDS (“AIDS to bankrupt India in 10 year”, The Financial Express, Reuters, July 13, 2005).
The UN is already much concerned at alarming rise in AIDS cases particularly in the Indian armed forces, both regular and the para-military. Frustrated by India’s apathy to the AIDS menace, the UN has agreed to pay cost of AIDS-preventing devices to India’s ‘1.3-million-strong military’ (“Free condoms for troops, UN to foot bill”, New Delhi, April 29, 2005, Samachr.com). According to UNAIDS, six of India’s states have ‘generalised [AIDS] epidemics’.
Director General of the Assam Rifles has made it mandatory (October 6, 2005) for all its personnel to carry a packet of condoms. He admitted that ‘more jawans were dying because of AIDS than to direct military action’. He added, ‘We accept the menace and do not deny it in the force’. The trend is increasing as the first case was detected way back in 1992 while the last one only four days back (“Carry condoms, Assam Rifles tells personnel”, Shillong, October 06, 2005, Sify.com).
It is not regular forces, or Assam Rifles alone, which are in AIDS grip. AIDS cases are on the rise in India’s all para-military forces. In March, 473 HIV-positive cases were reported among Indian paramilitary forces personnel. The Central Reserve Police Force reported 158 cases, the highest number of HIV-positive cases in paramilitary forces. The Assam Rifles reported 123 cases, followed by the Border Security Force, 100 cases, and the Central Industrial Security Force, 79 cases. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police reported 10 and the Sashastra Seema Bal three HIV-positive cases.
The Assam Rifles is deployed in all the insurgency-hit northeastern states, including Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. It is believed that the army personnel are spreading the virus at geometric-progression rate by molesting poor women in remote villages. The incidence of the AIDS is the highest in Nagaland and Manipur states (in Manipur, naked women, holding banners ‘army come and rape us’, had staged demonstrations against Assam Rifles.
Grave concern at alarming increase in AIDS cases in Indian armed forces (including paramilitary forces) was also expressed by various speakers at the fourth South Asian Regional Conference of Dermatology, Venerology and Leperology. They pointed out that ‘studies carried out recently had shown that over 30 per cent of all HIV cases in armed forces personnel were detected only after they had reached the advanced category of infection’. Most of the AIDS cases in Indian military hospitals were detected during investigations of other diseases like tuberculosis and Herpes Zoster.
There was no tradition of voluntary disclosure of the disease among troops. Personnel avoided mentioning their disease for fear of becoming a pariah among their own peers and in the eyes of the seniors. The lab facilities to detect AIDS cases were woefully inadequate. Regular armed forces had lab facilities to detect AIDS cases at the military hospitals, located in major cities.
The hospitals, accessible to para-military personnel posted at remote locations, have no such facilities. As such, the Indian government intends to set up a separate medical corps for India’s para-military outfits. Under the UN pressure, Indian government has decided (September 14, 2005) to set up a new medical corps for the para military forces (“New ‘medical corps’ for para military force”, Express News Service, September 14, 2005)..
According to sociologists, the AIDS menace in Indian armed forces is a spill-over effect of fast spread of the disease in various sections of civil society. India has the second largest number (over 5.21million) of HIV/AIDS-afflicted in the world after South Africa. Indian businesses, which participated in a survey by the World Economic Forum, have expressed the opinion that ‘the pandemic will have an impact on their business in the next five years’. In its first-ever survey of the Asian business response to the AIDS plague, the World Economic Forum said, ‘When asked about expected future impacts, concern is slightly greater, with 50 per cent expecting an effect on the business in the next five years…HIV/AIDS is causing more concern than both tuberculosis and malaria, and, although they believe the effects on the community will be greater than those on firms, Indian companies are slightly more concerned than other firms in the South and South-East Asia region’.
According to the report: Business and HIV/AIDS in Asia: Pushing Back the Tide released during the recent China Business Summit 2005 ‘Indian firms are seriously concerned about the impact of HIV/AIDS. To ward off the AIDS threat, Indian companies claimed to have adopted formal or informal AIDS-preventing policies’. Shrinivas Shanbhag, Medical Advisor of Reliance Industries Limited, said ‘that HIV/AIDS has a significant economic impact on business and economies. Reliance has entered into collaboration with the government of Gujarat and non-governmental organisations to create unique public-private partnerships in combating the deadly diseases’. Microsoft is funding several AIDS projects in India.
There has been no decline in transmission of the disease through blood and blood products because of use of infested syringes. Besides, there has been an increase in mother-to-child-disease transmissions. Alarming increase in reported cases has been reported from the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Business circles in India are fearful that AIDS would discourage private investors (foreigners and Indian nationals abroad) from investing their capital in India. With China emerging as a major economic competitor on the globe in near future (due to foreign investment of over $ 400 billion and construction of huge dams), AIDS spectre was of great concern to the government. AIDS may bankrupt India in five years.

India’s fake secularism
Mamoona Ali Kazmi

Since 1947, India claims it to be a secular state. In fact, India is theoretically secular but practically it is a state of Hindu fundamentalists, who want to eliminate Muslim minority from India. For this purpose they are employing different techniques such as attacks on areas of Muslim concentration, demolition of their holy places and their under-representation in Armed Forces, political, economic and educational institutions.
Historically and politically secularism implies separation of state and religion and non-discrimination on the grounds of religion. Following independence in August 1947, Congress regime under Nehru and his successors declared India to be secular democratic state. There are different interpretations of secularism in India. Nehru’s interpretation was that of the West. The state will not engage in religious activities nor promote any religion. Gandhi’s interpretation suggested that all religions are equal, and that the state will encourage the practice of all religions equally. According to the Hindu fundamentalist perspective, Hinduism acknowledges different pathways to God and, therefore, all Indians are Hindus. This view threatened the identities of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. In pursuance of this perspective Muslims of India have been marginalized in politics, economy and society.
The activities of Hindu fundamentalists proved that India is a so-called secular state, which cares only about Hindus and leaves other communities at their disposal. In the beginning of the 90s Babari Mosque, a 430 year old mosque in Ayodhya (Uttar Padesh), was demolished. On 6 December 1992, a mob of 300,000 Hindu fanatics brought together by the BJP and other extreme right wing groups demolished the mosque. They claimed the site to be the birth place of Ram, but the Muslim place of worship was nationally recognised. The incident resulted in series of riots in which more than 1500 Muslims were killed.
BJP and Vishva Hindu Prashad assume extremist postures and threaten minorities, which resulted in Gujarat carnage. BJP’s main goal is to convert India into a Hindu nation. BJP turned a blind eye to the attacks on the Gujarat Muslim minority that killed more than 2000 Muslims in March 2002. Hindu fundamentalist groups targeted Muslim homes and shops. Local and national security forces failed to control the situation. The state police did not intervene and the central government sent in troops to Gujarat at a time when a lot of damage had been caused to Muslim property and a large number of innocent Muslims had been slaughtered.
Recently a bomb blast in the 500 year old Delhi mosque due to lack of adequate security shows that in India there is no arrangement for the protection of minorities and their belongings.
From the beginning the Muslims are under-represented in the Indian armed forces. The Indian leaders also accepted this fact. Nehru said in 1953 that in our defence services, there are hardly any Muslims left. Mahavir Tyagi, Minister of state for Defence in 1953, also disclosed that the percentage of Muslims in the armed forces, which was 32 percent at the time of partition, came down to 2% only.
The Indian army does not fully reflect the rich diversity and plurality of the Indian society. It suffers from under-representation of certain ethnic, religious and social groups and from over-representation of some other groups most notably the so-called martial races favoured under the colonial system of recruitment, including Sikhs, Gorkhas, Dogras, Jats and Rajputs etc.
The Indian army embraced the discredited colonial martial race theory, which favoured certain fixed classes such as Gorkhas, Sikhs, Dogras in recruitment, Muslims were excluded from these. Certain Indian Intelligence agencies simply do not recruit Muslims, as they don’t trust them. These include Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Intelligence Bureau (IB) and National Security Guard (NSG) which is total negation of basic principle of secularism.
The Sachar committee, the Prime Minister High Level Committee for the preparation of report on social, economic and educational status of Muslim community was established in March 2005. The main purpose for the formation of the committee is to address the issues related to the socio-economic backwardness of the Muslim community in India and prepare a report providing authentic information about their social, economic and educational status by June 2006.
The query by the committee on the number of Muslims in Indian army has raised a political storm. Among the several hundred officers of Brigadier rank and above, there are only ten Muslims. Only about 25 Muslims have made to this rank since independence. A note was sent by the army to the defence ministry that in 2004 it had only 29,093 Muslims among a total of 1.1 million personnel that makes 2.6 percent out of total 13 percent of Muslim population.
It is so ironic that secular government of India has dropped the move to collect data on the status of Muslims in the armed forces. Although the survey would be purely a data gathering and fact finding exercise. Severe criticism on the issue by the former army officials of India is indeed shameful. The former defence Minister George Fernandes termed the Committee’s work a seditious Act aimed at communalizing the armed forces. Indeed this attitude from India’s responsible and important segment reflects that they do not want their so-called secular posture to be disclosed to the world.

Resolving energy crisis
Mamoona Ismail

First envisaged in 1991, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) gas pipeline is designed to transport natural gas from the Dawlatabad fields in Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and eventually to India. According to initial estimates, the 1,500-kilometer-long pipeline, stretching from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, would cost upwards of $2 billion to build, and would be capable of transporting about 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually. Of the three countries involved in the pending deal, Turkmenistan stands to gain the most from much-needed revenues for its natural gas exports. The pipeline would also ease Turkmenistan’s dependence on existing Russian pipelines to carry Ashgabat’s abundant energy resources to international markets. Afghanistan would benefit from transit revenues and infrastructural development, while Pakistan would receive natural gas for its domestic market. But the pipeline’s main long-term customer, India has not given any serious response about its natural gas to flow through Pakistani territory. Experts say that India’s often tense relationship with Pakistan makes New Dehli wary about participating in the TAP pipeline project, as the Indian government does not want to become dependent on Islamabad for energy supplies. At the same time, India is perhaps the primary market for Turkmen natural gas.
Many analysts opined that while the project is sensible in theory, but the political situation in Afghanistan is not sufficiently stable, yet. And the pipeline will have a lot of politics associated with it. So we have to wait and see how things evolve, but I don’t think we will see a pipeline anytime soon,” said Husain Haqqani, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a specialist on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moreover, there are questions concerning the potential impact that feuding warlords could have in Afghanistan on the security of pipeline construction workers and energy operations specialists. In addition, experts say no pipeline equipment is manufactured in the region, so it will have to be imported from Japan or western Europe, considerably increasing the costs and financial risks of the project.
The TAP project is crucial for the future of the Turkmenistan gas market, which has not been meeting its production targets, and faces the serious challenges of replacing outdated technology and attracting foreign investment. Turkmenistan is banking on the construction of the TAP gas pipeline to reverse years of decline in its drilling, processing and gas pipeline infrastructure. Moreover, Ashgabat seeks to increase natural gas production to 85 billion cubic meters annually by 2006 and 120 billion cubic meters by 2010. To meet its targets, the Turkmen government is counting on upwards of $25 billion in investments in the country’s oil and gas sector.