Opinion - News Analysis   

Social exclusion takes another form

George Jacob and C. Gouridasan Nair

It was on World AIDS Day last year that the world turned topsy-turvy for five children in Kerala. A local newspaper had run a story on them and the school they were studying in, and by the next working day two days later, a section of the parents were at the school demanding ouster of the five children, three of them HIV-positive and two born to HIV-positive mothers, from the 128-year-old Mar Dionysius Lower Primary School (MDLPS), run by the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Chur ch at Pampady, Kottayam.

The authorities at Asha Kiran (Ray of Hope), a rehabilitation centre for HIV-positive persons and their children, which had been hosting them immediately recalled the children and arranged private tuition for the five, four of them girls aged four to 11 years, at the rehabilitation centre.

The State Government and the State AIDS Control Society soon mounted a high profile awareness campaign and the State Health Minister, P.K. Sreemathy, and the local MLA and former Chief Minister, Oommen Chandy, talked to the protesting parents.

However, the parents at Pampady were not ready to accept the children into the midst of their wards. “The children are not from our village. Why should our children run a risk,” mothers asked at the meetings. The MDLPS has 50 students, the majority of them Dalits and from other backward communities and all of them from the poorer sections. “Admit at least one of the five children to the CBSE school run by the Church and we shall accept the rest,” said one of the parents in the very first meeting with Ms. Sreemathy. Ever since, things have not moved any further.

After the initial fuss, one by one, the authorities have left the scene and the children still continue with their home study programme. In February 2007, at a meeting of stakeholders, the Education Minister, M.A. Baby, asked the school authorities to allow the students to sit for their annual examinations and made it clear the government would protect the service of the teachers and the recognition of the school in case the parents took away their wards in protest, as they had threatened. Although the examinations passed off peacefully, the new academic year had yet another wave of shocks in store for the children as the parents revived their protest threatening to recall their wards. On June 25, a meeting of the parents called by the management constituted a five-member committee to find a lasting solution to the issue within one week.

“Since June 18, when the classes began, they have been able to attend classes only for two days,” says Sister Alphograce who takes care of the children at Asha Kiran. “They feel discriminated against at the school and we feel they are not safe there. We shall wait for one week and keep them here till the committee comes up with a decision,” she said. The adamant stance taken by the parents and the total apathy of the authorities has already attracted attention of the National Human Rights Commission and the Kerala High Court who have sought clarifications from the authorities concerned.

This is not the first time that the ‘progressive Kerala society’ has faced this kind of a dilemma. Two HIV-positive children, Bency and her younger brother Benson, in Kollam district in southern Kerala had to fight for nearly two years before they were allowed back at school in 2003, that too after intervention from President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

The next year, another pair of siblings, Akshara and Ananthu, were readmitted to the SNLP School, Mannamcherry near the temple town of Kottiyoor in Kannur district, after prolonged campaigns by authorities who had the support of a section of the parents. HIV/AIDS volunteers can recount any number of instances where the school authorities show initial resistance to admitting HIV-positive students to schools.

The sad plight of the HIV-positive children in all these instances is perhaps symptomatic of the problem of new forms of social exclusion in Kerala society, which had fought many battles to rid itself of social evils such as untouchability.

Today, beyond the immediate concerns of the political discourse, HIV-positive persons and their children are victims of an emerging social disorder. Attempts at reintegration have at best been cosmetic; and when local social and political pulls and pressures get activated, as has happened at Pampady, the outcome can be quite disconcerting. The local social and political dynamics, which have a greater role in the happenings at Pampady than in the other cases, have the potential to obscure the larger picture that more sections are being marginalised in a society that boasts of being rational and progressive.

According to the latest Sentinel Surveillance Report, the basic document on AIDS prevalence, the total number of HIV-positive people in the State would be around 1,00,000 and an estimated 10 per cent of them would be children. The State is still classified as one with low HIV prevalence. The first case was reported in Kerala in 1987, just four years after scientists Luc Montaigner and Robert Gallo isolated the AIDS virus at the Pasteur Institutes in Paris in 1983.

But even two decades later the mindset remains the same for a society which is claimed to be among the most progressive in the country. This has been attributed to the lacunae in the anti-HIV/AIDS campaign, which has so far been focussed on a ‘fear-based’ prevention policy rather than a ‘care-based’ support policy, and the failure of the local self governments and non-governmental organisations, whether community-based ones or faith-based ones, to make effective interventions.

Says K.A. Abraham, Pampady grama panchayat president, “We at the grama panchayat level are at present not at all empowered to handle the socio-political issues arising out of such issues. In most cases, the local politicians would be forced to side with the majority and we have nothing to offer as we have no project to take care of the HIV/AIDS afflicted persons.”

It is argued that there would be greater success in reintegrating the HIV-positive with the mainstream if projects are taken up by the local self-governments with the NGOs extending support through mutually-empowering partnerships. But the roots of the problems appear to run deeper into the psyche of the new Kerala society, which has travelled far from the much-trumpeted renaissance values into an unfamiliar terrain of new stigmas and taboos.

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