Persuading, protesting and exchanging favours : strategies used by Indian sex workers to win local support for their HIV prevention programmes

Abstract

Given that the communities which are most vulnerable to HIV often have little control over their own lives and their health-related behaviour, HIV prevention policies increasingly recommend that HIV prevention projects work to build relationships with powerful external groups (i.e. build ‘bridging social capital’). To aid conceptualisation of how community organisations may build such social capital, this paper outlines a typology of strategies for influencing local stakeholders. The authors present a study of 2 successful Indian sex workers' organisations, VAMP and DMSC, focusing on how the organisations have influenced 3 groups of stakeholders, namely, police, politicians, and local social organisations. Interviews with project employees (45), with representatives of the 3 groups of stakeholders (12), and fieldwork diaries recording 6 months of observation in each site provide the data