A Field Worker’s Diary – Part 65
We all know about the Telugu Ganga project undertaken in 1980. The main aim of the project is to bring the Krishna water from the Srisailam reservoir through the 406 kilometres of interlinked canal to Poondi reservoir in Tamil Nadu and supplying potable water to Chennai city. In addition to that, the project also aimed to bring water to around 5.73 lakh acres in drought-prone areas in Rayalaseema and upper lands in Nellore district and bring them into irrigation (I don’t know if that target was met or not).
Velugodu reservoir in Kurnool district is one of the 4 balancing reservoirs in between Srisailam reservoir and Poondi reservoir. Around 11 years back, I went along with my colleagues to this Velugodu area. Our tour wasn’t related to this reservoir in any way. In order to curtail the spread of HIV/AIDS, an international funding agency was implementing a program through local voluntary organisations in the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh. As the program was being implemented in this area, we went there to examine and assess the success of the program in achieving its targets. As part of that project, various local voluntary organizations in Kurnool, Warangal, Anantapur, Khammam, Nalgonda, Karimnagar, etc., are working with groups at higher risk of getting HIV /AIDS including sex workers, gays, transgenders, etc. All of them are together being called the ‘key population’.
By mobilizing this key population, they spread awareness about HIV / AIDS to them, set-up special clinics exclusively for them and provide legal services. In addition to those, they also established drop-in centers, a platform for them to meet other people like themselves and share their experiences and problems. They formed a community based organisation with them and established committees for advocacy, management of drop-in centres and clinics. They also organised many capacity building programs and put in a lot of efforts towards their health and safeguarding their rights.
Identifying this key population and bringing them together is no mean task. These people are ashamed to talk about their identity and struggle to mix with the mainstream society. To identify and bring together people, who face a type of isolation and are going through a painful identity crisis, must have been a very arduous job for the staff of the organizations.
The areas where sex workers do their business are called hotspots. Other people are mortified to go to these hotspots. However, the staff of the voluntary organisations went there and convinced the sex workers to form into a group and meet once every 15 days at the drop-in centres. Even though those people are living amongst us, theirs is an unknown and surreal world. After talking to them for just a few minutes, I felt that their situations, experiences and the problems they face are beyond our imagination. I was shocked to observe that more than sex workers and transgenders, the district had a large number of gay people.
Velugodu, the place that we visited, and the nearby Atmakur and Kothapalli had over 1500 people belonging to the key population. The population of sex workers was also quite large in Velugodu. To gauge the project’s progress, we held group-wise discussions with the key population. While some discussions were held at the drop-in centres, for others, the local staff arranged for us to go to the hotspots and hold discussions there.
The hot spot where we held discussions in Velugodu was, in fact, a sex workers’ colony. I was a tad bit amazed to see that all those sex workers living at the same place and doing the same occupation and establishing a colony for themselves. Upon commenting on the same, they told me how the colony came into being. During the construction of the balancing reservoir in Velugodu, a large number of engineers and construction workers uses to stay for months on end. This colony was formed near the reservoir to satisfy those people’s sexual needs. The local staff explained that since then these women had settled there.
The woman there told us that after forming into a group, together they had been able to solve many of their issues and access medical and legal services. This tour gave us an opportunity to understand and observe the positive outcome when people with common needs and issues form into groups.
While we were coming back after finishing our work, I looked at the reservoir and a thought dawned in my mind — how many lives had / have been crushed under the wheels of development and development projects?
Bharathi Kode