Shifra Menezes

Tata Steel's Aids-awareness initiatives and Tata Motors' anti-leprosy crusade have made Jamshedpur more aware of the two diseases, and kinder and gentler towards those suffering from them

The physical debilitation attached to diseases such as leprosy and Aids can sometimes seem less traumatic than the accompanying social ostracism that's visited on sufferers. Despite the wealth of information available these days on leprosy and Aids, and the many sensitisation programmes being run by government and private agencies, the stigma attached to the two health disorders remains as extreme as the plight of people enduring them is heartrending.

Given the circumstances, initiatives to educate and assimilate become all the more important. A standout example of the effect that sustained efforts on this front can have is seen in Jamshedpur, where two Tata companies, Tata Steel and Tata Motors, are reaching out to entire communities and building support systems that help people from vulnerable sections combat and prevent leprosy and Aids.

Tata Steel: The attack on Aids
When Tata Steel conducted a dipstick survey among 1,000 people in Jamshedpur in 2003, it found that 85 per cent of them were more than familiar with Aids, its deadly nature and what caused it. This was far from surprising, considering the concentrated efforts and investments that the company has made over an 11-year period to spread awareness about the condition across the township.

The Tata Steel initiative began in 1993, when the company realised that Jamshedpur, being an industrial city, was particularly vulnerable to the Aids scourge. "We have a large number of what is called the bridge population, which carries the virus and spreads it, " explains says Dr H. K. Gardin, the programme manager who has been with the initiative since its inception. "There are business visitors, truck drivers and their helpers, migrant labour, and the police. Also, the per capita income in the city is high and that leaves individuals with extra money for drugs, alcohol or unsafe sex."

The initial focus on company personnel quickly expanded to include non-employees. Tata Steel got involved in the social marketing of condoms. It set up six condom-vending machines at public toilets, bus stands, etc, places that see a large flow of the target traffic. It also established a clinic to provide free check-ups to truckers and impart information on Aids. The company has now spread its activities to suburban Jamshedpur and the rural areas around the township (the programme has penetrated over 600 villages).

Tata Steel has created a web of activities that are carried out internally with the help of a core group that comprises people from various departments of the company, including the Tata Steel Family Initiatives Foundation, the Tata Steel Rural Development Society and the Tribal Cultural Society.

Champions of the cause use all the media at their disposal to communicate and reinforce their message on Aids. While the intranet and internal magazines are used to address employees, handouts, hoardings, wall paintings, audio-visuals, video vans and films are used to carry the message far and wide. Tata Steel trains and orients workers for the dissemination of information on HIV, the virus that causes Aids, and also organises fairs and poster-and-slogan competitions.

The contests are part of the reason why the level of awareness among students in Jamshedpur has shot up from about 68 per cent to over 86 per cent last year. Another contributing factor is the workshops that are held every year in the student community. The programme emphasises the sharing of knowledge on Aids with this pocket of the population as it has the greatest impact.

In 2003 Tata Steel joined hands with the Orissa Aids Control Society to run what was dubbed the 'safe-highway project' on a 60-km stretch of the state's highway. An important part of this programme was the street plays held at various locations and occasions. Staged in the local languages of Hindi, Santhali and Bengali, the plays have proved to be extremely popular.

Tata Steel's many Aids endeavours have helped cap the incidence of HIV in Jamshedpur at 1 per cent of the population (as against the national average of 9 per cent). Given that this is a fight that people and organisations need to keep fighting all the time, there is no room for complacency. Tata Steel, for one, does not intend to rest on its laurels.

Tata Motors: Skinning the beast
"It started with my children having to face questions from the villagers about my disease," says Savitri Chakraborty as she deconstructs the damage that leprosy had done to her life. "People stopped visiting us. My daughters could not get married. We were leading an isolated life due to the fear and hatred unleashed by society."

When Savitri first developed leprosy patches on her body, she went to the local witch doctors and, then, the village quacks for treatment. Predictably, these failed and she was forced to retreat into a life of solitude and despair. Further suffering would have followed but for the Nav Jagrat Manav Samaj (NJMS), an organisation set up in 1982 as part of Tata Motors' community services division in Jamshedpur.

NJMS was established with a specific mandate: to cure and rehabilitate leprosy patients, "Our main objective was to identify leprosy patients and prescribe treatment so that the disease would not spread in Jamshedpur," recalls T. Jayakrishnan, a long-time member of the society and currently its secretary. "This was not an easy task since these people were scattered in different parts of the township."

NJMS — which has now grown into a team of 23 people, including medical officers, paramedics, a lab technician and a health educator — began by trying to get an accurate picture of the size of the problem it was dealing with. And a growing problem it was in those early days, considering the increasing incidence of leprosy in eastern India, mainly Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal.

After identifying about 4,000 people afflicted with leprosy, the society founded seven ashrams in different areas of Jamshedpur. Here, people could stay and get treated. NJMS went on to build a home and a 22-bed ward for patients who were turned away from regular hospitals due to their deformities.

Treating the afflicted would have been significant enough, but Tata Motors has gone beyond caring for and curing leprosy patients; it has made a strong effort to try and erase the prejudice associated with the disease, and to help rehabilitate patients and their families.

To combat the bigotry faced by healthy children coming from leprosy-afflicted homes, NJMS launched a campaign to spread awareness in schools and educate teachers and students. Some 300 children from the society's ashrams attend regular class, but more important is the change in their everyday lives. Their friends come over to play and their teachers visit for extra tutoring, evidence that the old barriers have been razed.

Today most of the residents of the ashrams are earning members of society. Open land has been divided into plots that are leased for kitchen gardening. The produce is sold in the village market and the money from the lease of the land is used by the panchayat to give loans in times of need. Cycle rickshaws are provided at a 50 per cent subsidy to people without deformities.

But the earnings of the inmates created an unexpected predicament. Says Mr Jayakrishnan: "Being illiterate, the people in the ashrams needed to furnish thumbprints to open bank accounts. Problem was, some of them did not have thumbs due to the disease. NJMS approached local banks and explained the situation. The banks helped by starting joint accounts where one person who was not deformed could operate the account for the entire family.

NJMS has now joined hands with the central government to widen its reach and extend aid to 240 villages in and around Jamshedpur. It undertakes an annual house-to-house survey in these villages, besides checking all schoolchildren to ensure that there are no fresh incidences of leprosy.

"I don't have the disease anymore," says a seemingly reborn Savitri. "My family is once again part of the village. NJMS has given me a new life." Stories such as Savitri's have played a part in convincing Tata Motors that its efforts have been more than worthwhile. "At the end of the day, we are happy that we have been able to do something for these people," says Mr Jayakrishnan. "When we see them smile we feel we have achieved something."

Uploaded in March 2005