A global business coalition backed by some of the world’s most powerful movers and shakers recognised India’s flagship enterprise Tata Iron and Steel with an award for community-based awareness programmes on AIDS at a glittering dinner here on Wednesday.

But while Tatas got the thumbs up, activists railed against the Indian government’s tendency to wave the problem away. AIDS will destroy economies and countries unless the world wakes up to the threat, speaker after powerful speaker warned, amid widespread fears that India is ignoring the scale of the problem.

The gathering for the black-tie event was indicative of the fear that is sweeping through the western corporate world and the US administration, and contrasted sharply with the rather blasé outlook in India. In a remarkable confluence of interest, some of the world’s best known businessmen-executives (CEO’s of Mercedes Benz, Viacom and Coca-Cola among them) sat with Washington’s makers and breakers, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Senators and Congressmen, to talk about the issue.

The award for Tatas was the one brief heady moment for India’s effort to meet the challenge of AIDS before the magnitude of the threat and the issue of government inattention swept away the congratulatory mood. The AIDS threat was so big that whatever Tisco is doing is just a drop in the ocean, chairman Ratan Tata, who was here specially to receive the award, said in his brief remarks.

On the margins of the event, activists and well-wishers panned the Indian government for failing to recognise the challenge. The Indian government wastes its time in useless debates and flip-flop policy, fumed Congressman Jim McDermott, who is also a physician and who first recognised the problem during his initial visits to India in the early 1990s. They have been hobbling along for a decade while the disease is eating away at the vitals.

By sheer coincidence, the event was foreshadowed by a front-paged story the same day in The Washington Post reporting in scary detail the spread of AIDS in India.

The Tamil Nadu-datelined story described a whole AIDS colony in a small town and said such scenes are increasingly common in parts of India, signalling the start of the long-awaited breakout of the disease from traditional high-risk group such as prostitutes and drug users into the general population.

Mr. McDermott and other Indophiles warn that should the Indian government and industry continue to take the AIDS threat lightly, it could devastate the Indian economy. AIDS is already wiping out productive work force in many countries. The mining industry in southern Africa has some 30,000 HIV positive workers in a 100,000 strong workforce.

In an eloquent keynote, Mr. Powell, who attended the event at Washington’s Kennedy Center between trips to South America and Cambodia, warned that ‘AIDS’ is no more just a health care issue but it’s a foreign policy issue. It is every bit as much a crisis as Iraq.

‘AIDS’ is an insidious and relentless foe-more destructive than any army, any conflict, any weapon of mass destruction. In the three hours or so we have spent here tonight, 1,000 people around the world will have died of AIDS and over 1,700 people will have become infected," he warned.

Yet, activists say, both the Indian government and business remain nonchalant about the threat, preferring to spend time disputing western estimates (as if it makes a difference whether only 15 million die of AIDS instead of the 25 million projected by CIA). One expert said Indian was resorting to the mythology of communal immunity (claiming Indians were less susceptible to AIDS) while shirking the fight.

Activists hope that Wednesday’s award to Tata Steel will at least spur other private companies to act on the AIDS front even if the government remains blasé. Tisco M.D. Muthuraman also blamed the media, including this newspaper, for abdicating responsibility to raise awareness of the danger AIDS is posing.

"I suppose it is not a sexy enough subject, Mr. Muthuraman remarked after criticising the frippery that he says has begun to characterise the Indian media. The Global Business Council, which gave the award to Tata this year, was formed in 1998 to persuade companies to get involved. The council now has 114 members Pepsico, American express, British Petroleum, de Beers, Nike, Citigroup, Bayer, Pfizer among them and is led by Mercedes Benz CEO Jurgen Schrempf.