Trucking down the AIDS trail

This year, the AIDS programme for truckers will be a decade old and a new
national AIDS plan will be formulated. AMITAVA SANYAL hits the highway for a
way out of old stereotypes and new myths


Day OneNew bottle, old whine ITH SO much talk about truckers and AIDS, it is
becoming increasingly difficult for our lot to get a bride," says Karamvir
'Kada' Rana. This 25-year-old trucker is not worried about himself - he
already has two W kids from four years of marriage. He winks at Monu, his
17-year-old helper who will be driving the truck half the way from Delhi to
Bangalore over the next few days. Anecdotal evidence from as far as Namakkal
in Tamil Nadu and Sangli in Maharashtra bear out the charge.

To what measure is such a stigma warranted for a legion of 60 lakh? The AIDS
control programme for truckers came to India a decade ago at the behest of
the World Health Organisation. What started with UK government funds in 1996
as the Healthy Highways programme was turned over in 1999 to the State AIDS
Control Societies (SACS) under the auspices of the National AIDS Control
Organisation (NACO). The implementation was left to scores of local NGOs.

Studies have pegged the incidence of HIV/AIDS among long-distance truckers -
journeying 800 km or more - at ranges between 4 per cent and 16 per cent,
which are higher than the national average of less than 1 per cent, but are
questionable on accuracy. What truckers are essentially paying for are the
stereotypical "risky behaviours" associated with the trade - unsafe sex,
alcoholism and an overbearing sense of 'fatalism'. As AIDS work has become
more intensive, the stereotypes have become more deeply etched.

I am going down this 2,500-km trail to get a grip on the contemporary
reality beyond the stereotypes. But the first stereotype pipes up within the
first kilometre. As the truck lurches on to the highway from the Sanjay
Gandhi Transport Nagar, Kada asks: "Do you drink?" When I say no, Monu says
sagely, "It will be difficult to pass the time. The loneliness is not easy
to cope with." Day TwoUnhygienic, uneconomic and unsafe After a juddering
ride through Jhajjar in Haryana, we stop on NH8 outside Jaipur. Before a
breakfast of malairoti at the dhaba, we finish our chores in the shrubs
behind and bathe at the reservoir in front. This level of hygiene is the
reality of the road all round the year. Except for some 'time offices' set
up by TVS, a transport company in the South, no one has heard of basic
amenities for truckers. No wonder sexually transmitted infections (STI) do
not come down among this legion.

G Balasubramanian, director of the Healthy Highways project, says, "How can
we bring about behavioural change when we cannot give truckers self-esteem?
Without decent amenities and professional recognition, they will remain
vulnerable forever." As we start towards Chittorgarh, Kada says, "Rajasthan
RTO officers sometimes chase you if you don't pay. The good thing about
going through Haryana was that we did not have to face the Delhi paanch
numberis." Paanch numberi is the trucker's endearment for the officer who
leaves a five-finger welt. There are more such terms for the officialdom the
trucker has to grease his way through. While the lowly havaldar is kutta
(dog), a police officer could be saanp (snake), bichchhu (scorpion) or neula
(mongoose) depending on the number of stars on his epaulet.

Kada has kept aside Rs 2,000 for oiling this machinery. Food, toll taxes and
sundry charges tot up to another Rs 3,000. Add to that Rs 16,500 for 500
litres of diesel, and Kada would be left with less than Rs 8,000 on this leg
of the journey. His big hope is to earn the premium of Rs 6,000 that
perishables fetch. Tarun Vij, project director at TCI Foundation (TCIF), the
AIDS-focused trust of one of India's largest fleet owners, had warned of the
typical trucker adept at proving that trucking is a zero-sum business. His
prediction has come true.

Whatever the balance, this economic reality has been in place since last
November, when the Supreme Court directed all states to stop overloading.
The immediate result was a 10-25 per cent rise in freight rates. Over time,
the implementation has become warped. Instead of charging the state fee for
overloading, RTO officers line their own pockets for looking the other way.
And they make money on underloading, too.

As darkness descends, an apt bit of bumper poetry on a truck calling itself
'Rajasthan ki Rani' stares back: 'Maut rishwat nahin leti hai/Use mat roko,
use jaane do.' ('Death does not take bribes/Don't stop it, let it pass.')
Day ThreeThegirls of Malhargarh Monu, who does not have a heavy vehicle
licence, takes on the wheel near the Madhya Pradesh border. The handover
coincides with the route getting on to the state highways between NH8 and
NH3. The Golden Quadrilateral gives way to a rattle so loud that it
threatens to drown the life-song of Bhagat Singh on the audio.
Sometime in the dead of the night, Monu screeches to a halt outside
Malhargarh.

The mention of Malhargarh has a magical effect on truckers. Their eyes clear
up. Then, depending on their ask why. One Gypsy operator tells me: "This is
the place everyone has something to hide. Why wouldn't we run?" I start on
the next leg with a grumbling Kada.

At Nardana, Dr Dinesh Ahirrao of the Sriram Ahirrao Memorial Trust, the
mother NGO for Dhule and Nandurbar districts, is looking for funds to expand
his 30-bed care centre. "This is a state where money from the Global Fund
(to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria) lapsed a few years back because of
non-utilisation!" he exclaims. The state's AIDS Research and Control Centre
is fighting a court case slapped by one of its former chiefs.

At night, Monu spots Kada's other truck waylaid before Chalisgaon, its
engine down and its driver being peddled opium - the trucker's panacea - for
incontinence. We are warned by a 60-year-old trucker: "The bypass ahead is
the worst I have seen in a long, long time." Soon after starting, we come
upon the 10-km bypass that would be worse than the worst in south Lebanon
now. On top, the state road development corporation has the temerity to
charge Rs 100 for passing through. The worst happens: 'puncturitis' hits our
truck.proclivity, they get conspiratorially close or dismissively distant. Though
the country's highway network is dotted with red light districts, Malhargarh
has lodged itself in the mind of the long-distance trucker as the place
synonymous with debauchery.

There are several villages on this economically-backward stretch between Neemach and Ratlam, given exclusively  to the sex trade - Shitod, Doda and Kasnera among them. But Malhargarh goes  around as the collective noun. Its stature has grown since the sex workers
of Dudu in Rajasthan were driven out. This is where the ustaad (driver) may
ask his helper to prove his mardaangi (manliness), often a step necessary to
move from a wage of Rs 2,000 to the Rs 3,000 that a full-fledged driver
commands. The ustaad may ask the helper to have sex with him, too.

As I approach the hut outside which a dozen-odd women are sleeping under the
watering eyes of a drunk matriarch, Monu throws me some advice: "Play safe:
tell them you are from the CBI." I ignore the wisdom and announce myself as
a client. The rate is Rs 100. For going to the adjoining field, there is a
premium of Rs 50. I pay the premium and take the nearest girl as far away
from the matriarch as possible.

She calls herself Sapna and looks not a day older than 14. I am reminded of
the myth among truckers that sex with a virgin can cure STIs. She declares
that even if I pay double the whole night's rate, she would not go without a
condom. My thought lauding the unknown outreach worker responsible for such
knowledge crumbles when I get back to the hut. A girl, trying to emphasise
the point, takes out a dry condom and flashes it before putting it away. As
more such experiences would bear out, just beneath the knowledge about
unsafe sex and AIDS, there is a sea of misinformation that can derail any
awareness campaign.

Sangita Mahadev More, regional coordinator of TCIF in Madhya Pradesh, says
for a state full of long-distance routes, the SACS has no focus on truckers.
Chandrakant Rathore, counsellor at the Ratlam SACS outpost, says no NGO or
state organisation works in the 'Sex Strip'. SACS gets across a few hundred
condoms to each village every other week. They get used up in a few days.
The rest of the journey is spent looking at the rearview mirrors. Robbers
are known to get on to the back of a truck and do away with goods before the
driver gets the wind of it. Sleeman's Thugs are thriving in MP. Day
FourWages of fear and tear An industry has sprouted along the MP-Maharashtra
border to take advantage of the overloading norm. Maruti Gypsys earn Rs
2,000-3,000 a day ferrying some of the overloaded items across the border.
Not content with shifting a load of bottled water - our truck's cargo - to
one such Gypsy, Kada gets his 100-kg stepney rolled across for good measure.

A curious incident awaits us on the other side. I go up a mound to click the
riotous colours of the sunset. Suddenly, a there's scram. The Gypsys scurry
to the back of the nearby dhaba, followed by trucks. Kada follows as well.
Apparently, it is because "someone from Delhi is clicking pictures".
Astounded at the tectonic reaction, I At one of the two trucking stations
covered by the Setu Trust in Aurangabad, there is some learning in the art
of communication. Baliram Dhere and Ramesh Salvi are guards at the terminus
who have been trained as peer educators.

To break ice with truckers, Baliram  sings an 'AIDS song' set to a Powada folk tune while Ramesh uses reams of  Internet pornography. Day FiveCrossed roads, mixed signals Surely,
successful outreach techniques should be shared among NGOs. But Aparajita
Bhalla, who handles the truckers' programme at Avahan, the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation's AIDS vehicle, is not convinced. "NGOs are very
territorial because their next grant depends on the population they serve.
Getting them to talk to each other is difficult." Reports washing up at NACO
say some NGOs have barred HIV-positive persons from seeking the government's
free anti-retroviral therapy.

NACO director-general K Sujatha Rao says, "I expect resistance from the NGOs
in the third phase of the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) that will
kick in from next April. Under it, NACO will set up its own intervention
centres at 600-odd sites chosen by the National Highway Authority and give
half the work to community-based organisations (CBO), not NGOs." Where will
the CBOs come from? "If one move by Chidambaram can halt all the trucks
around the country within 48 hours, surely there is an effective
communication mechanism among the truckers' associ ations.

Why can't we use  them?" asks Rao. But consultant Maju Mathew's experience at coordinating a  pilot programme with the All India Motor Transport Congress on behalf of
Family Health International does not give him hope. He says, "It just passed
the money to one model project and asked for more funds." If NACP I took
note of the nation's collective denial of AIDS, NACP II administered
high-risk groups like sex workers and truckers. NACP III will identify
truckers as a 'bridge population' and allocate just 1.1 per cent of the Rs
11,500-crore funds, thus stifling some NGOs even more.

The social marketing organisations bring up another troubled corner. Condoms
lay stockpiled at their warehouse for months and then get dumped at
year-ends to shore up numbers. Some end up in the Benarasi sari industry,
literally oiling the loom shuttles.

There are more reasons for worry. At Solapur, a nodal trucking point
serviced by several NGOs, insecurity runs high. Shrikant Gaekwad, project
manager at Niramaya Arogya Dham, says, "There is no surety whether donor
funds would be there beyond next March, whether we will still have a job.
How can we work out long-term plans?" At the Bijapur checkpost outside
Solapur, the sex workers show me how they check for the usability of a
condom without reading the date - by pressing the sides and feeling the
lubricant inside.

Puncturitis continues to hobble us. By the middle of the night, we have had
eight punctures in all. Day SixMakingacircleofit Karnataka RTO officers have
somehow attracted some of the most colourful stories. Truckers take great
relish in recounting the story of the Chitradurga officer's wife eloping
with a trucker, or how the Tumkur officer's wife ran away with - louder
laughter - an auto driver.

A barrage of under-the-breath questions flow alongside the mirth - "Can I
get infected by pissing on an infected piss-pool?" or "Can a woman give the
virus to a man?" In a way, this misinformation is more worrying than
outright ignorance. Fighting it at a time stigmatisation is peaking -
truckers are now decommissioning peers ailing from 'unknown' long
illnesses - is going to be a tougher task. After all, a new programme can
draw people out of curiosity; but there is going to be a stronger resistance
to deeper knowledge.

Dr Akash Gulalia, faculty at the Delhi School of Social Work who has worked
on AIDS programmes for over 15 years, agrees with the analysis. But he
believes it would still be possible to reach out. He puts the onus squarely
on innovative, non-condescending communication. Members of his Sukhad Yatra
Project, for instance, ask truckers to make art objects out of condoms and
films on nonsexual uses of condoms. At Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar, TCIF
organises Magnet Theatres, a concept its communication partner Path has
imported from Africa. In it, a play is enacted till the penultimate act and
then thrown open to the audience for debate and discussion.

But the country as a whole has not yet come to terms with AIDS. In the
fragmented world of the trucker, where more than three-fourths own just one
or two trucks, this holds particularly true for the owner community. This
denial is inevitable in a country that has reported just about 1.2 lakh
infections since 1987, when 57 lakh are supposed to be infected. Acceptance
would not come without more widespread tests.

Even if the money poured into HIV/AIDS is tripled, as is being sought to be
done under NACP III, there would not be a systemic check to prevent the
dreaded acronym from becoming what it has long threatened to be - an
epidemic. PS: Despite their best efforts, Kada and Manu reached back in
Delhi three days after Diwali. They watched the lights somewhere in MP.
amitava.sanyal@hindustantimes.com


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