There are nearly 300,000 children in India

There are nearly 300,000 children in India who are engaged in commercial sex. According to Rita Panicker of NGO Butterfly apprxoimately18 million children work nr live on streets in India and a high percentage among them are sexually active.

One of the harshest effects of the global AIDS epidemic is the number of orphans it has created, and continues to create. By the end of 2005, it is estimated that more than 15 million children had lost one or more of their parents as a result of AIDS.

Losing a parent is terrible for any child, but children living in India who lose parents to AIDS face unthinkable hardships. Not only have they watched their parents die, but they are stigmatized for having been associated with HIV and AIDS and are often forced to fend for themselves and their siblings. The result is that a growing number of helpless children are facing a cycle of abuse, neglect, stigmatization, malnutrition, poverty and disease.

In addition to the impact of HIV and AIDS as a health issue, in India the repercussions go much further. Children orphaned by AIDS have less chance of gaining an education and getting access to healthcare. Their poverty and vulnerability to exploitation also significantly increases their likelihood of contracting HIV themselves.

Children are being turned away from schools, clinics and orphanages because they or their family members are HIV-positive. Human Rights Watch in its in depth report has listed number of cases of children who had been denied admission to school in —Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Maharashtra.

The best-publicized case of children being denied access to school is that of Bency and Benson (their real names), two HIV-positive orphans in Kerala who were six and eight years old at the time I interviewed their grand parents in late 2003.

In contrast with the cases above, I also found instances in which well-informed NGOs and individual teachers had successfully educated school officials and other parents about HIV and gained the admission and acceptance of HIV-positive children. The director of a hospice in rural Tamil Nadu and NGOs in Chennai were able to get HIV-positive children into schools by educating school officials. While, these interventions were the exception, they demonstrate that discriminatory practices are not inevitable or cultural but instead can be and have been successfully challenged by courageous individuals.