World AIDS day -

It is such sad point that my 100th post happens to be about AIDS/HIV, but it got to be done.

Today is world AIDS day and the focus of everybody's attention is on India, rightfully so. By conservative estimates about 10 million people are carriers of HIV and by wild estimates it can be as high as 25 million people. That is more than the population of state of Texas. Can you now fathom the enormity of this issue?

I could make a 10 page post on this but there is only one solution to this situation - public awareness.

Almost all the systems run by Indian government are a miserable failure.

1. Public health
2. Primary education
3. Public transport
4. Public distribution

Only in a few states, the PT system has some value, but all the states fail in all aspects of governance. Given such pity state of affairs it would be completely foolish to expect government to take any action, so its upon the citizens to act. Associations like CRY, AIDINDIA etc, should team up special programs to target donors pleading for money to treat this disease.

I see many Indian associations abroad do a wonderful job at motivating people and collecting money for post-disaster recovery or for schemas to remove poverty. What we need now is a program specially to remove AIDS of the streets of India. Do I see any hands raising?