Nirupama Sarma
Yet another World AIDS Day has come and gone. And with it, de rigueur, the reports on the numbers infected, the televised debates on what’s being done (or not), the images of Bollywood biggies urging Haath Se Haath Milao. Twenty years since the first case of HIV was detected in India, does the Indian media accurately reflect its multifaceted dimensions? How effectively have organisations working in the field used the media to change attitudes and behaviours, and advocate for important HIV/AIDS-related issues? Perhaps most importantly, what has the average channel-surfing, paper-flipping, cinema-visiting person made of it all?
The media has journeyed some way, reflecting the epidemic’s progression from one concentrated in “high-risk populations” to a reality that permeates households everywhere. That over 70 per cent of people are aware of HIV/AIDS today is, to some extent, to the media’s credit, but as is widely recognised now, this awareness is insufficient — it is social norms, attitudes and behaviours that need changing, the media still remains shy of fighting the big battles.
Data in some states indicate that HIV prevalence rates are growing fastest among young, married women, proving that the hallowed institution of marriage offers little protection from the virus. Almost 13 percent of married men have sex with “non-regular partners,” while an India Today survey indicates that 37 percent of men have had one or more homosexual encounter.
Let’s put it plainly: multiple partners, pre- and extra-marital and paid sex, men who have sex with men. These are (also) the realities of India. Does the media reflect these realities? Only to a degree. Tackling issues relating to sex in a public domain can be a minefield. Spots made by the bbc World Service Trust (bbc wst) some years ago were taken off the air following objections that they condoned promiscuity. The high-profile Balbir Pasha campaign was temporarily grounded when activists alleged that the campaign stigmatised sex workers as vectors of the disease.
Controversies notwithstanding, these campaigns succeeded in grabbing precious mindshare. The Balbir Pasha campaign registered a 250 percent jump in calls to an NGO helpline; the BBC broadcasts, including infotainment serials such as detective Jasoos Vijay and the youth reality show Haath Se Haath Mila, reached over 50 percent of the Indian population via Doordarshan, with 85 percent of audiences saying they learnt something new.
If this is evidence of the magic of the media bullet, why have there been less than a handful of such national campaigns in the 20 years of the epidemic? The hitches are many — a long-entrenched mistrust of the media among NGOs, a lack of experience with media agencies, and, not least, the huge price-tag attached to media time. The BBC wst’s campaign was possible thanks to a tripartite agreement with Prasar Bharti and the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) involving subsidised media time, but whether this is a replicable and sustainable model given its reliance on donor funding, is debatable. It is certainly true that costs prohibit smaller, innovative agencies from being able to use public media.
Variations exist across television and print news, the English and regional press, but overall the sheer volume of HIV/AIDS coverage has increased. A bulk of the reportage — about 70 percent — however, is news-centric, much of it event or celebrity-based (Mandira Bedi releasing a music video, a minister ribbon-cutting a care centre), rather than an attempt at analysis or in-depth reporting. A more serious problem is the media’s own biases against HIV/AIDS, evident in the use of words such as kauda (Punjabi for leper), vish kanya (poison woman) and “sleazy sex” (in referring to male-male sex). Workshops, appropriate languages, field visits, tool kits and fellowships have been used to sensitise and build journalists’ skills to report on HIV/AIDS. Media representations of sex workers as “fallen women” and “anti-social elements” are, however, only very slowly shifting.
Leaving aside the issue of stigma, some of the key problems with HIV/AIDS reportage are those that undermine good journalism: an intractable obsession with celebrities and events, the absence of multiple perspectives, personal biases, the neglect of journalistic ethics of anonymity and confidentiality. Thanks to stories and photographs identifying them, people with HIV/AIDS have been thrown out of their homes and communities. Efforts have been made to get the Press Council of India to issue guidelines for reporting on HIV/AIDS. Legal recourse should be made available to those bearing the brunt of these violations.
Despite the millions spent on the mass media by the government and other organisations, the case has been one of more buck than bang. Beyond the hype, mass media campaigns are yet to demonstrate concrete and sustained changes in norms and behaviours that leave us vulnerable and at risk. Are we missing the message?
With interpersonal channels reaching less than 15 percent of the “general population” with information on condoms, sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, the mass media will perforce have to be the stage for such discussions. Some states have made noteworthy efforts (the Bula Di campaign from the West Bengal State AIDS Cell, for example, uses an elder sister mascot to talk about safe sex within marriage) but in regions like the Northeast, the media has played little role in counteracting the pervasive stigma surrounding injecting drug use which stymies needle-exchange programmes for HIV prevention.
On the eve of the third five-year National AIDS Control Programme, a four-fold increase in the communication budget is on the cards. Will it make a difference? How can the media respond more effectively?
First, the news media will have to accelerate sustained advocacy for some of the key issues dogging HIV/AIDS work in the country: the availability of free antiretroviral treatment to a mere seven percent of the people requiring it, the amendment of Section 377 that criminalises homosexuality, the formulation of HIV/AIDS legislation that protects people from stigma and discrimination.
Second, solutions must be established to break the deadlock of limited organisational budgets and expensive media time. Organisations working in the field need a long-term vision that informs mass media campaigns, professionalizes and outsources media work, and budgets for media time — enough to compete with Coke and cricket for those proverbial eyeballs. In turn, the media will need to revisit its social conscience, long-since abdicated in the freeing of the airwaves.
At the height of the epidemic in Thailand, the country had 73 hours of radio programming and two hours of television every day on HIV/AIDS — backed by serious political commitment and a heightened response at all levels. South Africa’s 12-year Soul City multimedia campaign addresses a number of issues relating to HIV/AIDS such as sex, gender and violence. By comparison, the media response in India has been pitiful.
Finally, there’s no escaping the fact that issues of sex and sexuality must be tackled in the mass media, the shaper of the Grand Narratives of our time. Labels of “high-risk” populations and “general populations” are, beyond a point, artificial and porous. As long as media continues to, for example, peddle the effeminate male stereotype of homosexual men and ignore the “heterosexual” macho male who is his sexual counterpart, it will be hard to accept the diverse realities and identities of our lives, leave alone talk about HIV risk in male-male sex. Further, as long as censorship and obscenity laws obstruct positive and human representations of such realities — even within the confines of documentary cinema — we will continue to lead the great Indian double life.
Is such content too explicit to be beamed into our homes? Can the Bollywood formula of fantasy sex ever successfully integrate hormone-driven muddlings, sexual diversity and condom use? Is it a Hobson’s choice between an honest media representation that runs the risk of offence, and one that offends nobody and achieves nothing? Is a lipsticked Chameli as close as we will get to discussing sex work?
There are no easy answers, but the godless proposition that the media will not only have to reflect these realities but also change the very norms that leave us vulnerable. It will, perforce, have to disturb the universe.
