Response to the Laadli award blog

Thanks to the buzz on the social media and a few concerned friends who wrote in to me and Population First, the agency behind the Laadli media awards, my Laadli award travails reached their ears and I got a response. I thank each one of you who wrote in to me and for your support. The following mails are 1. What Sharada of Population First mailed in response and 2. My reply.

On Jan 9, 2014 at 2:14 PM, sharada al wrote:

1. Dear  Chitra

I have read your blog forwarded by one of our friends and I fully empathize with you. If I were in your position, I would have been equally upset. I extend my unconditional apology to you. As I was on leave since I was shifting house, the mail sent to my official address was not seen by me. Instead my team responded to your mail. That is the reason for not receiving a response from me.  I agree that my team member’s response was inadequate due to her inexperience. I take full responsibility; I should have been more hands on in my supervision.

Chitra, let me assure you that I believe that I am insulting myself if I insult another person, particularly someone whose work I admire and honor. And it causes me great anguish that our actions have distressed  you so much.

We feel miserable when we have to say ‘no’ to air travel and some of our awardees cannot attend the event. The fact that we did not get a travel partner this time made it very difficult for us to give any special concessions to anybody. May be we should make an exception for awardees from North-east. I would definitely be considering your suggestion for the next year’s awards.

I would also like to clarify that we could organize the event at Taj Deccan because they joined us as Hospitality Partners. Otherwise, we really do not have the resources to host it at such a high end hotel. We always take care to do our best, obviously it is not good enough and we fail miserably at times.

Chitra, whatever has happened should not have happened, be it the typos or the broken citation or inadequate response from my team and I am extremely sorry about it. 

 Warm regards

 Sharada.A.L.

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2. Dear Sharada,

 I appreciate your response and hope that Population First will not only take adequate but thoughtful steps to pro actively help awardees who are not from the rest of the country who are well connected in terms of connectivity and communication.

 It is regretful that it was only after I wrote my blog and a lot of media people got active that I got your response. I did not get any auto 'out of office' mail from you or Bobby and I had only the two phone calls as my sole communication link. Again, the calls were not helpful to my cause.

I would like to put this email reply up on my blog because I need to inform people who have been following this over what has turned out.

I would appreciate it if the correct citation is sent to me with adequate care so nothing gets broken this time.

regards

Chitra Ahanthem

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And thus rests the issue. I have no idea if they will resend me my citation (with the correct wording). When I shared my blog with a e mail group of the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) a very well respected journalist who has also been a former awardee had this to say:

Shocking account, Chitra. My own experience with the Laadli award ceremony in Chennai in 2007 was also not particularly inspiring. Apart from not taking care of transport expenses, they didn't even serve tea to the assembled awardees. We had to sit through a ceremony during which we first had to listen to a number of male speakers (no women at all) who had nothing to do with the media or, really, gender/the girl child. None of the awardees were asked/allowed to utter a single word! And, of course, there was hardly any audience in the enormous Music Academy auditorium. :)

Laadli media award story: an epic failure at honouring awardees

Chitra Ahanthem

On December 13, 2013 I was supposed to be making an appearance at Hyderabad for the fifth edition of the Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity 2012-13 that ‘honors media and advertising professionals’. Instituted in 2007 as part of the media advocacy efforts under the Laadli girl-child campaign, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)-Laadli Media Awards were launched by Population First, an NGO. In 2010 the awards were branded as the Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity (LMAGS) and according to its publicity material, ‘the award felicitates, acknowledges, recognises and encourages media, journalists and advertising professionals to keep working on gender issues and to draw the attention of the public to their positive efforts in the media with regard to gender sensitive reportage’. Now, the said awards are given according to four separate regions: Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western with Manipur and other states in the NE being included in the Eastern region. After sending in my submissions under the print category for a few select editorials for Imphal Free Press (IFP) I got an e-mail sometime on November 22, informing that I was one of the awardees.

The award citation when it did reach me.

Whatever amount of happiness I felt at being selected for the award was punctured by the careless intimation that said: “Your entry titled ‘The Annual Spectacle of Irom Sharmila’ has been selected as one of the winning entry for “The Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity 2012-13” in the Television Category. Its people like you from the media who have helped bring about a very perceptible change in the life of women by bringing about mindset changes.” The e mail citation said my selection was under the Television category when my work with IFP is purely in the print format! That e mail was only the curtain raiser for a few other disappointing developments starting from the response from the folks who are behind the awards. When I wrote back a ‘Thank you’ e mail, I also pointed out that my entry was under the print category and that was met with a off hand explanation after an apology that went on the lines of ‘your entry has been classified as print only but since the mail was being sent to a number of people there was a slight mistake in typing you could call it errors of cut and paste era’. The worst part of it all was that for the travel to the awards venue only the train fare costs would be taken care of by the agency because it ‘did not have enough funds’, an explanation that was for me both smacking of a total ignorance of the distance and time factor involved in the travel and ironically showed that the said awards do not necessarily include honouring the awardee(s).

Another journalist from Manipur who had been conferred the award in an earlier edition told me that she did not attend the award ceremony because of the train and flight cost issues which meant that the agency had the choice of either looking for funding support from their network of agencies or shifting the venue to somewhere closer. Going to Hyderabad even by the flight option would have meant changing flights and lay over time in between while the train option from Imphal was out of the question with the state yet to be connected to the country’s railway network. And so, attending the award ceremony went out of my hands leaving a distasteful experience behind and wondering how in the world the award is meant to encourage media practitioners. But this issue of connectivity on one hand and the lack of room for concessions to this lack comes in the way of being a part of the larger picture.

I have absolutely nothing against road or train travel. Rather, they are interesting experiences but when agencies send forth invitations with set riders on how to travel without factoring the time and distance in question, it gets a tad difficult to take in silently. The jarring note for me is that Population First, the agency behind the Laadli media awards can associate with a luxury hotel like the Taj Deccan as a venue but not give any effort to find travel support for me or any other of the awardees from the North Eastern states. Efforts to engage Population First in a discussion on the issue was kept strictly one sided with my e-mails remaining unanswered (still). The e mail exchanges below are self explanatory: they were written after the award ceremony and addressed to the two senior most people at Population First- SV Sista and A.L. Sharada : (sent on December 16, 2013 and unanswered till date)

Dear Bobby and Sharada,

 I was informed on November 22 that I was being conferred the Laadli media award for my entry 'The annual spectacle of Irom Sharmila'. My submissions were under the print category and for the Eastern region. The e mail informing me about the media honor said I was selected under the 'TV' category: this, when my entry was for print. when I pointed this out, a careless explanation of 'e mail in a hurry' 'cut and paste' issues were handed to me. When I requested that my travel costs be allowed to cover flight fare, I was given a generic 'we are an NGO and do not have funds, we can cover only 2AC train tickets'.

I am writing in this mail to point out a few problems with the train travel bit when it comes to the NE and its connectivity with the rest of the country:

1. I am from Manipur: we do not have a rail head at all. There's construction going on but it will take another 20 years. Given this backdrop, I could not have got into a train at all.

2. Even if I took a bus to Guwahati (in Assam): it would have taken me a day. From Guwahati if I had to take a train till Hyderabad, I would have to stay an extra day at Guwahati because of timing issues. It would have taken me 3 nights. In between, there are no daily train services linking the cities.

 Given the above circumstances, I would have taken 6 days for one leg of the journey. I am a journalist working on deadlines and spending a total of 12 days for two train journeys for an evening (for the awards) would have been a tad too much. Unlike other parts of the country where people can get into an evening train and reach another metro the next afternoon, we grapple with long distance and irregular connections. I also found that an earlier Laadli media awardee from Manipur, Thingnam Anjulika Samom missed out on the awards because of the travel vis a vis cost/distance. I would have been honoured in the real sense of the term if your agency had tried to liason with other agencies to cover flight costs for awardees from the NE region. Another area is that I was told that I could not publicize about my award before the ceremony but I am still clueless about the award/honor given to me. I was waiting for a citation e mail or a press statement that my paper could have carried.

 I hope that when your agency can look at including media practitioners from the NE for the awards, a little bit of understanding of the constraints that we face here will also be given due consideration in the future.

 Regards

Chitra Ahanthem

 _________________________________

A courteous e mail reply could have settled my ruffled feathers but I was in for more rude shocks. In the last week of December, I got a call from Population First asking me my postal address so they could courier me the award citation and trophy. The conversation went like this:

Staff: We have bubble wrapped the glass framed citation and if it breaks by the time it reaches you, I would like to apologize in advance.

Me: Could you pack the bubble wrapped pack properly and send me through Bluedart or Overnite Express, marking it as ‘fragile’?

A flimsy cloth covered a layer of 3 sheets of brown paper that held the glass framed citation

Staff: We will ask our courier guy since I have no idea which services deliver there.

Me: Overnite and Bluedart delivers. I have got all my stuff through them.

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January 8, 2014:

I got a thin packet that was covered with a flimsy cloth through Express Speed Post. There was no ‘fragile’ marking and I could hear the contents of the package moving inside. I immediately called up the office number mentioned on the pack. The conversation went on these lines:

Me: I am a Laadli media awardee but I have this feeling that it is less of an honour and more of a token thing. My earlier mails are unanswered. I had specifically asked that the citation be packed carefully and marked ‘fragile’. I had even suggested that Bluedart or Overnite Express be used.

Staff: We sent it by Express Parcel Post.

Me: It is not about which service you used but the manner in which it was marked and how no ‘fragile’ markings were made out. Can I talk to the person who is in charge?

Staff: Her name is Revathi. She is out of office and will be back next Monday.

 Following the conversation I decided that I would at least open the package though my immediate reaction was to ask the postman delivering it whether he could send it back. 

After removing the cloth, I found 3 sheets of brown paper taped all over the frame. When I opened this lot, I found the bubble wrap cover and when I started opening it, glass pieces and shards were spilling over me. A few newspaper pages was all that lay between the bubble wrap and the remains of the glass frame. The citation jarred yet again. After my name and the name of my publication (IFP), it was written: "Best Editorial: Chitra Ahanthem: Imphal Free Press-For her editorial on marginalization and trivialization of Irom Sharmila's struggle for repeal of AFSA (yes, they forgot to put a 'P") for 'AFSPA'. Again, I wrote another e mail.

After the brown paper layer was the bubble wrap

This time, I addressed it to Revathi Asokan (the point person for the awards) and appended the e mail that I had sent in earlier:

Dear Revathi,

Greetings.

Sometime back, I got a call from Population First informing me that my Laadli award citation and trophy would be couriered to me. I did not get the name of the caller but I had told her then that just bubble wrapping a glass framed object would not suffice. I had told her to pack it properly and use either Bluedart or Overnite Express. The caller said: "I have bubble wrapped the glass framed citation and if it breaks by the time it reaches you, I apologize."

Today I got a cloth wrapped brown packet, which contained the bubble wrapped remains of what was earlier a glass framed citation. There was no covering letter with regard to the award trophy either.

I regret to say it but have to tell you that in my long years of being a journalist and having won various media fellowships (from CRY, PANOS, the National Foundation of India, UNICEF), my experience with Population First is the worst. I am not too sure if the award you have conferred on me is an honour or a mere token.

The citation is technically wrong: it says "For her editorial on marginalization and trivialization of Irom Sharmila's struggle for repeal of AFSA". The last should read as 'AFSPA' for Armed Forces Special Powers Act and not as mentioned in the citation.

Presenting the Laadli award in its shattered glory

regards
Chitra Ahanthem
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I am not too sure whether this mail will be answered or if the award trophy will reach me. I find that I don’t really care much if they send it across and would feel the same way in the event that they don't send to to me but I strongly feel that such callous indifference needs to be brought on record. I have won other media fellowships and have been well looked after. I still remember how the CRY people took note of my long flight hours and gave me two books from their library 'to read in between flights' when I was chosen as a media fellow to write on children in armed conflict areas. My first media related honour was the North East Media Exchange Program undertaken by the National Foundation of India under which I was attached to The Hindu office in Chennai. The paper took care of my one month stay for the fellowship period so I would not finish up my fellowship amount. The Laadli media award experience is one that l hope, never happens to any other media person.

Driving Manipur

IFP editorial for January 15, 2013: http://www.ifp.co.in/nws-11811-driving-manipur/


Drivers Day, a day marked by observations across the state to pay respects to the drivers who ply on the treacherous National Highways of the state is a grim reminder of the travails they face on the road. Left to fend for themselves in inhospitable terrain and remote pockets of the state, drivers on the highways have not been given their due share of respect or recognition. Driving long distances day in and day out can never be described as the best way to live one’s life but for these drivers who does this exactly, the people of Manipur would be struggling to get the bare essentials of life. Given the land locked nature of the state, the highways are the only option for bringing in a host of basic commodities that people need in the span of a day: starting from rice itself. They face innumerable challenges brought upon by the volatile political environment in the state and are often caught in between various state and non state armed groups ranging from physical violence and harassment, looting, arson against the vehicles they drive, wrongful confinement, extortion and even death.
Sadly, there is little by way of protection for the drivers of the state who ply on the Highways except by way of a few compensation cases where the Government has stepped in. But this has been too far and between and have happened only when the cases have taken place during phases of political turmoil of the state. There are no protection mechanisms for the families of the drivers who happen to die because of accidents. The lack of a state mechanism and policy is the main factor aided by the fact that private agencies and owners of the vehicles do not have support systems like giving insurance covers for the drivers. At the society level, there is a total lack of respect for drivers leave alone acknowledging their contribution in the economy and the very nature of the existence of society itself.
People who make a living by driving on highways have the worst in terms of their work hours and their social and family lives. Driving for long hours, they are mostly prone to falling prey to back pains and body aches while being away from their wives or sexual partners make them prone to paid sex leading to chances of getting sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. The incidence of truck drivers getting into paid unprotected sex caused enough concern for the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) to develop and put into practice intervention programs aimed at this section, which is also categorized as a ‘high risk group’.  The adverse effects of long term driving hours on highways are common for everyone. But drivers in Manipur face additional hardships of being stranded for days on end if they happen to be caught in the midst of a sudden bandh or blockade on the highways. The absence of safe places to stay during the course of their journeys is another sore point.
But mostly, most of us tend to ignore the contributions of the highway drivers who ferry goods and passengers from this state to the rest of the region and the country and vice versa. Getting into a token ‘Driver Day’ observation will only be an act of gross injustice if there are no real term solutions and support systems for these drivers, who namelessly serve the people of the state till they die one day and their picture gets garlanded and floral tributes given. Every occasion of the ‘Driver’s Day’ in Manipur marked by floral tributes and recollections of hardships inevitably get stuck with the demand for the Imphal-Jiribam Highway to be completed. Time and again, different agencies including the Government itself, makes announcements and promises that still remain unfulfilled and forgotten till the next big political crisis in the stare happens leading to another blockade of the highways, another bandh and another lot of drivers harassed, stranded and injured. With rumblings over a not so smooth political environment in the state ahead, it would be wise to make the day for drivers by gearing up seriously on completing that Highway.

Customs, norms and ethics

My IFP editorial for January 14, 2013: http://www.ifp.co.in/nws-11795-customs-norms-and-ethics/

In the face of cries and claims of social crimes against women and instances of exploitation of women and children in the state, it is rather disquieting to note the rising trend of incidents where guardians of girls, including minors resort to ‘social compensation’ (ijat daabi) as a way of settling disputes without any regard for legal procedures. To begin with, the practice of eloping before marriage as an accepted practice by the society gives a wide awning for young women to be sexually exploited under the cover of this tradition. There have been innumerable cases where women have been duped into sexual relations with the promise of marriage, which follows in most incidences. While legally such actions can be challenged and action taken against the errant men involved by filing legal cases citing reasons for cheating and false promises, it is the social practice of ‘compensation’ and other social practices that complicates matters especially when minors are involved.
There may be arguments that legal actions when it does happen also result in financial compensation, which in a sense is also what also takes place in the practice of social compensation. But one glaring difference is that legal punishment also involves sentencing and legal censure, which is not considered in social resolution. In a sense, the social resolution route in such cases can also be seen as an out of court settlement without time and effort being spent on legal procedures but can unfortunately lead to the men being involved in the further exploiting of other women. Once money enters the picture and the man involved gets to know that it speaks volumes, it can only contribute to taking women and society for granted. Legal sentences and directives are more public and hence lead to a more careful and cautious approach, if only to save face. In certain cases, parents and guardians hush up elopements involving minors by resorting to ‘ijat daabi’ being involved rather than file criminal charges.
There is another practice called Keina Katpa, which literally means offering the girl. Co-incidentally, the practice of eloping was earlier not socially sanctioned and those who did elope were married off with great haste without much fuss and this was called Keina Katpa. In the present times, eloping before marriage has become a norm while Keina Katpa is enforced by women vigilant groups on couples who they claim have been found in ‘compromising situations’ and are carried out without any regard for individual choices or the couple in question being ready for marriage. There is no legal sanction in these types of practices and in fact, stringent legal action can be taken up against the said women groups for forcing marriage without consent. The irony of women groups revealing identities of young girls and women so caught in their vigilant drives is another sad face of the gender justice perspective in Manipur today.
In present times again, the spectacle of Joint Action Committees in the state over any issue has also touched upon the gender sensitive or gender blind debate. The incident of the rape of a young married woman in Thoubal as we have seen, stands out because the woman in question was kept in judicial custody before wheels fell into place. But the travesty and farce of calls for justice, falls through when one hears of the JAC being named after the woman in question. The identity of a woman who has been a victim of sexual violence cannot be revealed either by the media or any agencies without a written consent from the women in question. This is done mainly to shield the woman from further social stigma and is critical in a small place like Manipur where there is a tight knit community. Leave alone names, media reports cannot even hint at the identity of the woman or give away any leads that can aid in establishing her identity. But a cursory scan of the newspapers in Manipur will reveal just how much rights awareness is known and being put into practice when it comes to gender related rights.

Dare for truth

IFP editorial for January 11, 2013: http://www.ifp.co.in/nws-11729-dare-for-truth/

The claims of 7 residents of Heirok being lured to an Assam Rifles camp under the false pretext of being taken for Army recruitment and made to sign up as being members of an armed underground group is another sorry aspect in the murky world of militarization in the state. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that fingers have been raised against the various ‘surrender’ programs that are taking place and will be not the last time either. The Assam Riffles on its part have earlier maintained that the claims of ‘fake surrender’ in the state are nothing short of false propaganda and that there are various layers and processes of verification of the people who come forward to ‘surrender’. While armed groups operating in the state have termed surrender programs as an eye wash and a ‘counter insurgency strategy’, the Assam Riffles have called such claims as unfounded. Caught between the two, it is the larger public who are made to be the hapless spectators and totally unsure of who to believe and whom not to.
Following the imposition of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 in the state, the central armed forces have the impunity to ‘shoot to kill’ on mere ‘suspicion’ that the target is an insurgent. And before the claims and counter claims over ‘fake surrenders’ came into light, the earlier buzzwords were ‘fake encounters’. With total impunity coming along with AFSPA, there could not be any legal processes taken up in Civil courts and fake encounters became the order of the day till massive protests broke out over the brutal death and alleged rape of Thangjam Manorama, said to be a cadre of an underground group. National and international media could not ignore the subsequent nude protest by 12 women, and their scrutiny in a way led to fake encounters at the hands of the Assam Riffles to climb down. In its place came the new fangled idea of ‘joint counter insurgency operations’, which involves the state police in tandem with para military forces in the state. The recent Supreme Court ruling on instituting an inquiry commission to look into 6 cases prior to examining over 1500 cases of alleged encounter killings by the state police speaks volumes of the culture of lies and the orgy of violence which is being put into practice. In a state where the state government believes in people being shot to death without their trails, in a state where Para military forces can run riot under total impunity, the public can do nothing better than observe things with a jaundiced eye.
Assam Rifles and other para military units in the state often say that they are in the state to win hearts and that the cries of ‘fake surrenders’ are happening because they are succeeding in making inroads into getting the confidence of the people. They say that while their civic military programs and other forms of supporting civic populations are bringing them dividends in terms of preventing young people from joining insurgent groups, the surrender and rehabilitation packages are to give a medium for willing to get back into mainstream life. Noble thoughts without any doubt but given the air of suspicion and distrust on one hand and the presence of various forces at play all too willing to make the best for themselves on the other, there is no reason why the public today cannot seek clear answers over the process and procedures involved in surrender programs. The explanation that the state police are responsible for the verification of people who come forth to ‘surrender’ is not something that the people in Manipur will take kindly too. The state police is not the best candidate in winning public confidence in Manipur- not when various elements of the state police get hauled up in a near regular basis for crimes related to vehicle lifting, kidnapping, extorting, contract killing and murder. All said and done, no amount of local hysteria over the matter will ever bring any real seriousness to establish the truth. It will take the national or international media to take forth this story. Or it will take another knock on the doors of the Supreme Court.

The road not repaired

IFP editorial, Jan 10 2013: http://www.ifp.co.in/nws-11708-the-road-not-repaired/

Roads today are the lifeline of any geographical entity or location in the world. In a global domain of connectivity, they are the backbone for economic transactions and the path through which social and cultural interactions takes place. That roads and highways are a major game player for the people of Manipur has been proved time and again through the various economic blockades on the national highways. Any organization or group with real and imagined angst and grievances in fact tend top take the roads of the state into ransom and in the process validate its integral role on the lives of people. The public ire of residents in the area from Wahengbam Leikai to Oriental College along NH-37 resulting in road blocks in the said road stretch may well be the beginning. The road block enforced by the residents of the area was relaxed only after PWD officials gave an assurance that the road would be completed. After all, the people in the state, has had to content with constant delays over road repairs and construction of other infrastructure meant for public use. Even in the capital town of Imphal, residents had to wait for years on end for the over bridge along BT road to Uripok to be over. Repairs followed this on the Nagamapal to RIMS road that threatened to go on forever. The list of roads being repaired and dragging on for years on end to completed would be rather long considering that we are yet to contend with the situation of roads in other districts as well.
Residents imposing a roadblock in the area that they themselves live speak volumes about the apathy of the concerned departments and the State Government towards the inconveniences that the general public faces while using those roads. VIPs who travel in comfortable vehicles and who do not take these roads daily are just not the best people to be able to identify with the dust and potholes, or the diversions and discomfort. There can be no justification good enough to cover up for the lack of political will and commitment to facilitate better road connectivity in the state. One only has to compare the scale of road or even metro projects in other parts of the country and the way progress is made while also taking care not to hinder the movement of people. Cut to the local scene and road repairs means extended years of ‘in progress work’ and materials to be used in repairs being piled up, thereby leading to traffic jams and dusty environs.
Just last year, there was another interesting story of another road in Tamenglong district, a road that was supposed to materialize under Government funding. Though the road is yet to be fully complete, it has caught the imagination of people across the world and brought in hordes of media as well. Despite a sanction of Rs 101 crores way back in 1982, the road never took off and people living in the area in the remote area of Tousem had only experiences of hardships while trying to communicate or traveling to other parts of the state. Ironically, it took a Government employee, an IAS officer who was the sub-divisional magistrate of Tamenglong and his family, to take a personal commitment to constructing the road. When his family members donated their salaries, it triggered off a wave of donations thanks to media attention and the story going viral on social networking sites. Not a single voice stood out to ask why the Government was not being held accountable for the road not being there. No one asked why tax payers money which had been pumped into the construction of the road had not been used or what had happened of it. The answer would of course have been simple: that people had no expectations from the Government to begin with. The logical thing to do would have been to file a PIL or an RTI inquiring over the central funding for the said road and what work progress was happening. But the logical thing for the people of the area was that they needed their road and they would get it themselves. And therein is the tale of two roads. One self made and the other self blocked and the Government left with mere excuses.

Tropic of Cancer

IFP editorial, January 10, 2013: http://www.ifp.co.in/nws-11686-tropic-of-cancer/

Last year, the Million Death Study came out with its first findings on the nature of Cancer as a disease in the country. The main collaborators for the study, Mumbai's Tata Memorial Hospital and the Centre for Global Health Research mapped how it resulted in almost 6 lakh deaths annually.  Seven out of every 10 deaths, it said occurs among people who are in the 30-69 age group. Nearer home, it said that a youngster living in India's northeast is four times more likely to develop and succumb to cancer in his lifetime as compared to a youngster living in Bihar. Earlier on, cancer was thought to come calling to people who smoked incessantly or used tobacco but increasingly, it is becoming clear that more studies and scientific research needs to be initiated into looking at what really leads to cancer. Though there are no Manipur specific reports on Cancer cases, there is no denying that the disease has become common in our midst.
In much the same way that HIV/AIDS is termed a social leveler, Cancer afflicts people without much regard for class or caste distinctions, gender, race and ethnic lines or even age. The health seeking behavior of people in the state in terms of foregoing regular health check ups also leads to its detection at later stages which impedes treatment processes. The highly expensive costs for treatment is also a major deterrent when it comes to cancer patients seeking treatment, or continuing it further. Often treatment costs for a family member living with cancer means a major drain on the family resources. With low levels of seeking and getting health insurance or in cases where the insurance is in place but inadequate to cover costs, Cancer is today becoming a death knell for many in the state. The lack of price control of various medicine components used in different stages of cancer treatment also mean that international pharma companies get away with their pricing which is way beyond the capacity of middle class and low income groups.
The Health Ministry at both the Centre and the State have much to learn from the response to HIV/AIDS over the years. At one point of time, ART for people living with HIV/AIDS were available only at expensive rates, which people had to buy on their own. But efforts of civil society groups, NGOs working in the HIV/AIDS sector, networks of people living with HIV/AIDS, industry leaders along with political leadership led to generic drugs and prices came down and soon the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) could roll out its free ART program. HIV/AIDS can also be largely said to have contributed to scaling up basic health care systems in the country. The HIV/AIDS chapter needs to be revisited so that the lakhs of people who are getting stricken with cancer are able to get diagnosed and treated well in time with cheaper treatment measures.
One other area that people living with cancer or who have survived it can take from people living with HIV/AIDS is the manner in which affected and infected people come together to form support groups. The treatment process for cancer can be long and can drain not just the finances of a family but take away the emotional and mental ‘resources’ so to say. Support groups can be a health way of healing and coping for the person living with cancer and for the family members as well. A study conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) that started in 2006-2007 pegs the average cost across all cancer treatments at Rs.1,602 per week. This figure does not however, factor in radiation costs or expenses for seeking treatment outside of the state.
Along with price control for cancer medicines, the Government also needs to look at supporting treatment costs. At the National level, the Health Minister's Cancer Patient Fund was created within the Rashtriya Arogya Nidhi Scheme proposing to establish a revolving fund in the Regional Cancer Centres (RCC) to speed up financial assistance to needy patients. Under this scheme, a sum of up to Rs.1 lakh would be provided as assistance to cancer patients in the BPL category but this is far too little, too less even if it is being implemented at all.