India’s risks: forging a new multidisciplinary debate

Photo : Petr Pavlicek / IAEA.
Source: iaea_imagebank / Flickr / cc-by-sa

A prospective superpower, India is grappling with a host of risks that threaten to hamper its progress towards becoming a more economically successful, egalitarian, safe and harmonious society. India's population routinely deals with the risks from HIV/AIDS, earthquakes, floods, industrial accidents and environmental disasters, and more recently the risks and uncertainties brought about by rapid advances in science and technology, such as BT Brinjal (GM Aubergine) and nuclear power.

Social movements in India have long voiced concerns around the processes for deciding whether a risk is 'safe' or 'acceptable' and who is taking these decisions. They have pointed to a noticeable imbalance in the type of knowledge and expertise which has been shaping key policies, legislations and institutions. They have also fought for communities' perceptions of risk and local knowledge to be included in these processes. Uncertainty over where the line should lie between science and politics during the assessment of risks, and how to reconcile divergent risk perceptions, has triggered a large number of protests over the years.

Whilst psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, political theorists, philosophers and scientists in the West have vigorously debated these various issues around risk over the last 50 years, this multidisciplinary field of academic research on risk has been relatively unexplored in India. Little research and resources have been invested in exploring these issues and Western scholars have also, for the most part, been reluctant to engage with these issues in India. The Journal of Risk Research, for example, has relatively few articles examining risks in developing countries.

In an effort to address this gap in the field, the STEPS Centre and the Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore initiated a project entitled 'Risk, uncertainty and technology in India', funded by the UK India Education Research Initiative. An international conference was organized at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore in February 2011 which brought together Indian and Western scholars and practitioners across the fields of psychology, anthropology, law, politics, sociology, public health, philosophy, science and architecture. Together they offered insights on the theory of risk, lessons from the West, and the realities of risk in India. These conference papers have now been revised and updated and included in the recently published volume India's Risks: Democratizing the Management of Threats to Environment, Health and Values, edited by Raphaelle Moor and M.V. Rajeev Gowda (OUP India, 2014).

This volume analyses different but profoundly interdependent risks such as nuclear power, Bt Brinjal, environmental decision-making, maternal mortality, H1N1, HIV/AIDS and post disaster reconstruction through the same analytical framework. It delves into the meaning of risk in India, asking what it signifies for policymakers and different factions of society.

It also probes the political, social, and economic dynamics that have shaped the very different constructions of risk in India. In particularly, we ask how India's aspirations to become the next leading superpower have framed policymakers' assessments of scientific and technological risks? What knowledge and expertise do policymakers tend to consider relevant to include in their risk assessments? And are those risks that they have identified and chosen to address consonant with those constructed by the community?

Examples abound of the recurring mismatches between the government's and communities' construction of risks. This has resulted in ineffective policies, socially destructive conflicts, and the erosion of trust and stability. India's Risks makes the case for urgently forging a new multidisciplinary field in India in order to explore these questions in greater depth. Whether the Western frameworks and models presented will be relevant to the challenges of the Indian context remains to be seen but this wealth of examples and resources provide a useful platform to begin constructively negotiating a new path towards governing risks in India.

by Raphaelle Moor

Raphaelle Moor is a co-editor of the book India's Risks: Democratizing the Management of Threats to Environment, Health, and Values (OUP India 2014). She is a consultant in the area of disaster risk management and climate change adaptation, based in London. Raphaelle managed the UKIERI’s (UK-India Education and Research Initiative) ‘India at Risk’ project at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore for over two-and-a-half years.

Find out more

Book: India's Risks: Democratizing the Management of Threats to Environment, Health, and Values

Project: Risk, Uncertainty and Technology in India

Sexuality and Sport in Burkina Faso: “Gentle” actions and partnerships that stand up to homophobia

 
Like many sport and development (S&D) organisations throughout Africa, the organisation I have been working with since 2011 in Burkina Faso uses sport to bring youth together and to communicate lessons about HIV and sexual health practice. Using sport as a means of communicating information has shown to be an engaging alternative to talking at young people in a classroom.  As an athlete myself, and one who squirmed through lessons about sexual health in a small room when I was a teenager, I can see the benefit of teaching in a setting where young people are comfortable and attending out of interest, rather than obligation.  

 

Since its inception in 2005, the S&D organisation I work with in Burkina Faso has grown and now works in partnership with the National Ministry of Health, UNHCR, local health organizations and local schools.  Through these partnerships, the organisation has been part of a movement to push policies in Burkina Faso (and West Africa) to extend access to sexual health resources and to fund education about HIV and sexual health in youth centres.[1] Despite the successes of this movement, the drive and focus to educate youth about sexual health has a dangerous blindspot: homophobia and transphobia.

 

The limits of inclusion

I can remember only one occasion during a session about HIV infection out on a football pitch when homosexuality was mentioned.  In this moment, the coach brushed quickly through the mandatory statement that condom use is necessary for protection not only for sex between a man and a women, but also between men. This was followed by giggles.  The coach did not address the reaction of the youth, nor did anyone ask about women who have sex with women, or people who have sex with both men and women. They quickly moved on to the next exercise in the session.  This moment made me pause, and I reflected on how I might feel as a young LGBT person who was part of that group.  I would have felt invisible.

 

S&D programmes that address issues of sexual health should address them for everyone.  These same programmes proclaim inclusion in their mission statements and programme goals; they work with girls, boys, different ethnicities, classes and nationalities, and with youth with disabilities. But how many of them are working with youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender?  I would venture that the unfortunate answer is that they do not know.  And yet, in a climate where laws in countries like Uganda and Nigeria make it dangerous to even broach the topic of gender identity and sexual orientation, it is understandable that these development programmes may not even know how to begin.  But this is also an opportunity, and an example of a strategic avenue for productive policy engagement that the Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme at IDS is exploring.

 

The value of ‘gentle’ action

Some of the young women I met through my involvement with sports in Burkina Faso earlier this year introduced me to an organization called the Queer African Youth Networking Center (QAYN).[2] QAYN is based in Ouagadougou and works throughout West Africa.  They are an example of a small group of dedicated young people whose mission it is to support and foster youth activism about LGBT issues and to promote the safety and well being of gays, lesbians, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth in West Africa.  They may not be a very big or visible organization, but they are providing a vital resource to youth who need support.  Just like S&D programmes, they are helping these youth to build confidence and leadership skills. 

 

When I sat with some of the youth who are part of QAYN, and asked them what the biggest problem they face in their community is, the answer they gave me was visibility.  The youth in QAYN work to make LGBT people, and rights, visible; but this visibility also comes at a cost. They told me that they are often shunned by their families, and have to hide from their friends and in public because people just do not have any awareness about diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity.  They said that the more people who know someone who is LGBT and who accepts them, the more their families will begin to understand and accept them. 

 

Some of the youth who have found QAYN take part in the sport activities and sessions on HIV and sexual health that are facilitated by the S&D programme I work with.  In fact, this is how I met them. And yet their identities have been all but invisible in the S&D context.  Is this not an ideal opportunity for a partnership between the S&D sector and an organization that works with LGBT youth to give these young people a voice and critical support?

 

In a conversation with one of the young members of QAYN, he explained that laws – like societal norms – cannot change overnight.  QAYN’s strategy, therefore, uses ‘gentle’[3] actions for building toward change. These ‘gentle actions’ include supporting LGBT youth, creating partnerships with other NGOs in their communities and raising awareness with local organisations and policy makers to lay the groundwork for potential policy and law change in the future. 

 

The members of QAYN are incredibly brave and safety is a perpetual challenge for them, even in a country like Burkina Faso where homosexuality is not specifically outlawed but is socially proscribed[4].  QAYN welcomed me and my colleagues from the S&D organization, offering to help with our sexual health curriculums and activities, and asking with genuine interest if they could visit a sport event.  This rare meeting of sectors is an opportunity to contribute to these “gentle” changes in perceptions that QAYN is working toward, and one that other S&D organisations should actively seek out.   It is part of the necessary on-the-ground steps toward social change that are the undercurrent to legal and policy changes on such controversial issues.

 

By Alison Carney, Consultant and Researcher on Sport, Development and Gender.

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[1] http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/linkages/RASburkinafaso.pdf

[2] http://www.qayn-center.org/

[3] translated from French: doux/douce

[4] http://www.lgbtnet.dk/countries/africa/burkina-faso

“AIDS has a woman’s face”, or does it? Beyond the Gender and HIV Dyad

By Elizabeth Mllls, KNOTS fellow

As we approach World AIDS Day, and move into 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, I am prompted again, to reflect on some of the important links between gender-based violence and HIV, and also some of the problematic assumptions that perpetuate uncritical thinking on the gender-HIV dyad.

A Discomfort with Development Categories

Meet Zama, a 33-year old South African woman and an old friend of mine; she has been an AIDS activist and professional HIV treatment literacy practitioner in South Africa since the height of AIDS denial in the early 2000s.  Zama lives in Khayelitsha, which means ‘new home’ in isiXhosa. Its name is rather cynical, given that in this area homes are rarely ever permanently sunk into the earth. Space matters here when the only source of water is a leaky tap, whose muddy veins run down unlit side alleys where women risk rape when they leave their homes at night, or when all adults and children risk electrocution (from illegal wires that wind through the sand) when walking to the single toilet that also serves their 500 – 1000 closest neighbours. Khayelitsha is also the space where women have stood with men, in conjunction with the Treatment Action Campaign and Médecins Sans Frontières, to call on the state to provide essential AIDS medicines; it is the place where these medicines were first made available through the MSF trial in 2001.

Like almost 33% of Khayelitsha’s residents, Zama is also HIV-positive; and like almost two million South Africans, she is on ARVs. She explains,

“It’s like when the skies fight, when the clouds are angry and dark. They crash into each other and lightning flies across the sky. You never know where the lightning is going to hit. That’s what it’s like with HIV” (Zama, 2011).

In this conversation, Zama told me how she had initially found it difficult to negotiate safe sex, or sex at all, when she was a young woman. Zama had been wary of narrating this ‘illness history’ because it colluded with the ‘development category’ of the poor, black HIV-positive woman who was unable to actively navigate her own life. In fact, she eschewed labels like ‘HIV-positive woman’ and considered herself to have substantial personal power to negotiate her current sexual, socio-economic and political relationships.

Looking beyond Victimhood: Between Agency and Structure

While the presence of gender inequality, and its brutal manifestation as sexual violence in girls’ and women’s lives, is a strong feature of my work, I – like Zama – have been confronted by the explanatory limitations of epidemiological assertions that stipulated a correlation between gender inequality and higher rates of HIV infection among women compared to men. I do not dispute this correlation; my research has been informed by the multiple and intersecting inequalities that seemed to drive HIV, in epidemiological terms, into women’s lives and bodies. This was most striking when, in 2008, young women in South Africa were almost four times as likely to be HIV-positive compared to young men of the same age (20 – 24) (Johnson et al., 2013, Dorrington et al., 2006).  Overall prevalence in this age group has subsequently declined, but the characteristics of prevalence according to sex remained the same: young women are still more likely to be HIV-positive than men (UNAIDS, 2012).

Studies link these statistics to sexual violence. Articles with titles like “AIDS has a woman’s face” or “Troubling the angels” proliferated in research that explored this correlation.  Other research suggested that sexual violence and its relationship to HIV occurs against an inflected backdrop of pervasive and entangled inequalities in South Africa, where gender, sexuality, race and class powerfully intersect to reinforce poor Black women’s vulnerability (Dworkin et al., 2012, Jewkes and Morrell, 2012).

Although these studies give texture to the correlation between gender inequality and high rates of HIV incidence among women compared to men, they may also (unwittingly) support a paradigm that has fuelled development interventions to ‘empower’ women by foregrounding women’s relative lack of power compared to men. Ascribing HIV transmission, in epidemiological terms, to entrenched gender inequality does not, in itself, engage with the complex pathways that women navigate between desire and risk in their sexual relationships, and in extremely difficult socio-economic contexts.  In this respect, my research shows that women are subtly, and sometimes with great difficulty, negotiating their intimate relationships with men by forming separate households and by working and establishing their financial independence. This was not a straightforward matter of asserting agency or submitting to intersecting structures of inequality.

The Biopolitics of Violence: Bringing a Global Network of Actors into View

In my research on gender and HIV, and now as I convene the Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme at the Institute of Development Studies, I suggest that we – researchers, policy makers, activists – need to be careful about situating vulnerability in individual bodies and relationships. I propose that we nuance our analyses to look at how people’s bodies and lives are located in a far more complex network of actors. I suggest, then, that the gender-HIV dyad is problematic not only because it positions women as passive victims of men who are, conversely, held to be active perpetrators (or even more unhelpfully, ‘vectors of transmission’). More fundamentally, it is problematic because these discourses direct our attention towards individuals or ‘cultures of inequality’ and away from the biopolitics of violence in which national, regional and global actors are implicated.

While we certainly need to address the manifestation of inequality in people’s lives, the bolts of lightening, we also need to explore the context – the skies that fight – in which women’s lives are located. This includes a recognition: of the subtle ways that women hold agency, albeit fraught and contested; that men are a part of the solution in working towards equality; and that national, regional and global actors need to be held to account for the ways they intimately affect our lives, from a distance, at the most molecular level.

References:
Dorrington, R., Johnson, L., Bradshaw, D. & Daniel, T. (2006) The demographic impact of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: National and provincial indicators for 2006. Cape Town.

Dworkin, S. L., Colvin, C., Hatcher, A. & Peacock, D. (2012) Men’s Perceptions of Women’s Rights and Changing Gender Relations in South Africa Lessons for Working With Men and Boys in HIV and Antiviolence Programs. Gender & Society, 26, 97-120.

Jewkes, R. & Morrell, R. (2012) Sexuality and the limits of agency among South African teenage women: Theorising femininities and their connections to HIV risk practises. Social Science & Medicine, 74, 1729-1737.

Johnson, L. F., Mossong, J., Dorrington, R. E., Schomaker, M., Hoffmann, C. J., Keiser, O., Fox, M. P., Wood, R., Prozesky, H. & Giddy, J. (2013) Life Expectancies of South African Adults Starting Antiretroviral Treatment: Collaborative Analysis of Cohort Studies. PLoS medicine, 10, e1001418.

UNAIDS (2012) World AIDS Day Report - Results 2012. UNAIDS.