ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Chochi, a village in need of aid

Election officials are known to climb hills, cross rivers and trek through jungles to set up polling booths. But never before have they had the experience of negotiating a village said to be ridden with HIV-infected people.

The said village, Chochi, is in Haryana. With an electorate of 4,000 people, it falls in the Rohtak constituency where former deputy prime minister Devi Lal was defeated by state Congress chief Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

Neither of the two, nor the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Swami Indravesh visited the village after the election. The inhabitants, naturally, are angry with the whole exercise -- especially, with the poll officials, who refused to eat at the village.

Azad Singh, the village leader, said the team of 20 officials set up camp in a school outside Chochi and treated the villagers as ''untouchables.''

However, that is nothing new for the villagers. Ever since one of them, Ranbir Singh died last year of ''full-blown AIDS,'' as certified by doctors at the Rohtak medical institute, the villagers have been kept at arms length by everyone.

Joint-Action Council, Kannur (or JACK, as it is known), a non governmental organisation, has already filed a human rights violation case in the Chandigarh high court. The court has issued notices to the Union health ministry and top officials.

Azad Singh has now filed an affidavit to the case complaining about the behaviour of the election officials. He is also bitter that none of the three contestants visited the village after the election.

Hooda said he was planning to take up the matter with Central government officials once the political situation stabilised.

Chochi was in the news when JACK chief Purushottaman Mulloli and Azad Singh brought a group of villagers, including Ranbir Singh's widow, to the Capital and presented them at a press conference last year.

According to Mulloli, what happened to Chochi is an indicator of just how bad India's donor-driven anti-HIV policy is, and how it damages rather than helps people.

The petition in the Chandigarh high court says that although the National Aids Control Organisation was supported by $ 100 million from the World Bank, it was unable to help people like Ranbir Singh or his family. Since Ranbir Singh died, the local administration had resorted to forcible testing for HIV in the village, destroying any little faith the people had in officialdom's ability to handle AIDS.

Villagers said that HIV may have spread among them through a certain quack, who had been arrested by the police for using unsterilised needles.

The worst thing about the affair, Azad Singh said, is that the people from neighbouring villages are refusing to have any marriage alliances with the Chochi-ites, suspecting them of being promiscuous.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report