AIDS has spawned diverse medical and scientific approaches, with emphasis shifting from immunology, virology, and the like and each constructing the discourse in various ways. In common parlance there was a growing panic about the global nature of this pandemic, the sense that its spread was rapid, and the paradoxical assumption that on the one hand no-one was safe; yet that those ‘responsible’ for AIDS belonged to certain marginalized groups. It was in the climate of this growing international panic about AIDS that Population Services International was employed by USAID to create an awareness campaign for HIV/AIDS in India, and of this was born Balbir Pasha—a figure never seen directly, yet one who became a household name, and was clearly identifiable as most likely a migrant, low-income informal sector laborer, who visited sex-workers, drank occasionally, and would probably, as apparently, all ‘men like him’ were likely to, contract AIDS. The campaign was constructed in the model of gossip being passed around—other people debated whether Balbir Pasha would get AIDS, and then realized that their own practices were potentially dangerous. The campaign reflects a number of key themes of international AIDS discourse in that it is an example of international intervention into a third world context.
I am reminded of Balbir Pasha in connection to two contemporary concerns: the conversation in Kerala about migrants spreading diseases and crime; and the frenzied international discourse around migrant deaths. The #migrantcrisis, as it has been dubbed, has been thrust into the spotlight with the deaths of thousands of desperate migrants at sea; but what must be closely examined are the terms in which this discourse is carried out; how migrants are socially and discursively constructed. How does the West construct the Third World? Balbir Pasha serves as an interesting case study to examine such concerns, and though a dated example; worth remembering.
Marketing fear
Sherwin explores the metaphors used in the discourse of the AIDS pandemic, and emphasizes that metaphors can “lead us to think about problems in certain specific ways and this feature makes them very influential in determining how we will respond to those problems.” (Sherwin 346) The significance of this campaign lay in the fact that this was the first time AIDS had been treated in this manner: PSI’s approach was that of a widespread advertising campaign; and in effect, what this served to do was to market the fear of AIDS. PSI’s emphasis in creating the campaign was to target ‘high risk groups’, which they identified as low-income group males. This high-risk group then, defined the campaign’s approach, and Balbir Pasha was created as a figure that they were meant to identify with.
Who is Balbir Pasha?
The profile of this high-risk group is in itself highly problematic. Those afraid of AIDS are the men; and not all men, but men who drink, and visit sex workers. PSI itself put out a statement to the effect that they were targeting three ‘issues’: “The Alcohol Connection”, “The Regular Partner Issue” and the “Asymptomatic Carrier Issue” (PSI 2003). What these three when read in conjunction would suggest is that everyone can potentially be at risk; but what we see manifest in the advertisements is the suggestion that only certain kinds of men are. Another factor was the selection of cities for the campaign: a case study suggests that port cities were selected because port cities are points of convergence (linking to the panic about inter-national transmission of the disease), a high number of men working as informal labor are employed, and men who are often away for long periods of time from their wives and families. (thensmc.com) This we see how stereotyping operates in the very framework of the campaign and its dissemination. The teaser trailers of the campaign present us with an entire spectrum of men who are presumably the target group; from coconut vendors to barbers, commuters on the local trains to street vendors. The scene ends with a young boy shouting to the houses in the neighborhood—“Balbir Pasha ko AIDS hoga kya?” Thus the teaser locates AIDS firmly within a specific section of the population, while suggesting that the question is relevant to the entire spectrum of men who fall within these demographic specifications.
Pandemic, purity and pollution: AIDS as a spectrum vs. AIDS as threat
Sherwin talks about how the metaphor of impurity and pollution attaches strongly to the construction of AIDS as a pandemic. She suggests that “by appealing to an underlying metaphor of pollution, this interpretation had the effect of blaming members of these risk groups for their own illness and for the risks they were said to bring to others in society and so conceives of the infection in a way that makes the diagnosis … grounds for shame”. (349) This then served to further emphasize already circulating ideas about marginalized groups like gay men, lower class men, sex workers and the like. Thus the fear constructed around AIDS in global discourse links to AIDS being identified unitarily as a disease, not, as is more accurate, a condition that comprises of a host of factors, and thus as Sherwin adds, “It seems that the original vision that the deadly nature of the virus attaches to the individuals who carry it remains a powerful influence in setting the public agenda for AIDS; in both the scientific and popular consciousness, there is still a strong tendency to collapse the threat of the virus to the person who is (suspected of) carrying it.” (352)
Balbir and Manjula: Women as vectors
In PSI’s campaign, women as identified merely as vectors of disease and contagion. Sherwin writes that for a long time, the disease was identified essentially as one that affects men. As a result of this, “scientific interest in tracking the rate of infection among women has largely been aimed at keeping an eye on the virus's heterosexual spread and at preventing women from passing the infection on to their children, that is, on treating women merely as `vectors' of transmission of the virus”. (357) One of the advertisements depicts a woman and a man, with the woman, who seems to be a sex worker, asking the man if Balbir Pasha will get AIDS. The man replies that Balbir only visits one woman and she seems health enough, and the woman points out that women like herself can look healthy even with AIDS, and then laughs manically, asking if he is scared now. Women in these advertisements are mostly simply carriers of HIV, and the narrative discounts their experience of AIDS. The women in the campaigns have names: the poster with ‘Majula’ became highly prominent over the course of the campaign. But Manjula is simply a silhouette, a body that carries disease and must be treated with suspicion, and unsuspecting Balbir Pasha is seen as foolish to assume her fidelity. What is interesting is that mothers are not at all a part of the discourse of the campaign, but prostitutes are, and we can infer that prostitutes as visible because they are identified as a part of the global economy. Booth points out that in unlike mothers who are regulated privately by either the family or the state, international discourse (specifically in context of the United Nations) “constructed the problem of sex work and HIV as one that transcends national difference and is therefore subject to a global solution…the prostitute is portrayed as an essential part of the global economy” (Booth 128) Thus sex workers are constructed as having agency over their bodies, and are in UN discourse given more agency, to practice safe sex and protect their customers. This agency is paradoxical in that with this agency comes blame and responsibility. “Will Hariya’s wife and his to-be-born child become Balbir Pasha?”, an example from a later stage in the campaign when NGOs had intervened and the scope was broadened, is the only reference to women who are not prostitutes but mothers; and reflects an interesting inversion—the woman is suffering, but from her husband’s infidelity and lack of awareness—and this poster directly identifies ‘men like these’ (with the silhouette of a glass of alcohol at the bottom of the frame and a hand extending a wad of notes in the forefront) as those responsible for infecting innocent and nameless wives and unborn children. The focus is still not on the wife and child, but on Hariya, and is premised on negative identification with this character rather than a sensitivity to issues faced by women with AIDS.
Faceless Balbir
A major thrust of the campaign was the new tagline ‘Who Will Become Balbir Pasha?’, which was apparently amended after criticism from NGOs, yet reflects the crux of global perceptions about AIDS. By leaving Balbir Pasha as faceless, and by formulating the campaign in the form of questions, creating a sinister uncertainty, (“ab sawal apne aap se kijiye”) the campaign reflects dominant perceptions about AIDS, and brings in the fear of everyone being at risk. We now see Rocky, Manu and Hariya being introduced as Balbir Pasha’s alter egos, yet this brings in even more problematic stereotypes—for example, the word ‘date’ being placed in inverted commas in the advertisement with Manu—again more subtly implying either sex-work, or a general sense of illicitness for non-marital relationships. An interesting absence is non-heterosexual intercourse; in that despite the over-emphasis on gay sex being linked to AIDS, any implications of gay sex in the campaign are entirely absent. However, this is clearly less a move away from previous modes of stereotyping, and more of an emphasis on what is now identified as a sexual majority ‘at-risk’.
Stereotypes, sexuality, and population control
The campaign ran into several different kinds of criticisms; ranging from women objecting to the use of the name ‘Manjula’, to NGOs objecting to the heterosexual and male bias of the campaigns, and even to charges of indecency and obscenity. However, PSI identified a sharp rise in the purchase of condoms in red-light areas, an increase in the use of their helpline, and in the availing of VCT services. PSI’s defense stressed that no campaign can adequately target all groups—yet the problem was not simply the exclusiveness of the campaign, but how it constructed the group it was targeting. Chen points out that parallels can be drawn between AIDS and other epidemics, and that one of the major social implications of epidemics was the increase of xenophobia between affected and non-affected groups (135); and the fact that movement across national borders are regulated stringently. While in today’s context, the regulation of physical movement across borders is rapidly becoming a discourse of panic and xenophobia, international constructions of third world countries as sites of disease, and the need to control third world sexuality and reproduction, are also vital forms of regulation across national boundaries. It is significant then, that this international intervention into AIDS discourse in India came from an agency called Population Services International. Though the campaign creates the impression of identifying differentiated social groups; by creating individual characters, it also creates stereotypes, and feeds into the social construction of a global pandemic for which the Third World and its more disadvantaged citizens are to bear the brunt of responsibility and thus regulatory attention.
Watch the Balbir Pasha advertisments here.
View some more Balbir Pasha billboards here.
References:
Booth, Karen M. ‘National Mother, Global Whore, and Transnational Femocrats: The Politics of AIDS and the Construction of Women at the World Health Organization’. Feminist Studies, Vol 24 No 1. Spring 1998. pp. 115-39. Feminist Studies Inc. Web, JSTOR.
PSI. ‘Balbir Pasha: HIV/AIDS Campaign is the Talk of Mumbai’ PSI, Washington, August 2003. Web, PSI.
Sherwin, Susan. ‘Feminist Ethics and the Metaphor of AIDS’. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 26: 4. 2001. pp. 343-364. Taylor and Francis, Web, Taylor and Francis Online.
‘ShowCase: Will Balbir Pasha Get AIDS?’. The NSMC. NSMC.com. Web, Slideshare.
< http://www.slideshare.net/anandsaraf96/will-balbir-pasha-get-aids-full-case-study>
Chen, Lincoln C. ‘The AIDS Pandemic: An Internationalist Approach to Disease Control’. Daedalus, Vol. 116, No. 2, Past and Present. Spring, 1987, pp. 181-195. The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Web, JSTOR.
