The phone rang at a call center in New Delhi one recent afternoon. When an agent picked up the receiver, a young woman whispered hesitantly. She said that she lived with her large extended family in a remote rural settlement and that nobody knew she was calling.
"I told her to be open and have no fear. She paused after every word," recalled Payalkumari, 27, the call center agent, who uses only her first name. "Then she slowly opened up. She was newly married. She said her mother-in-law wanted her to have a child right away, but she was not ready to. She asked, 'Is there some contraception that I can use secretly and nobody else will get to know in the family?'
"Payalkumari has taken hundreds of such calls since June, when India's government-sponsored National Population Stabilization Fund opened a call center to provide reliable information about such socially taboo subjects as family planning, contraception and reproductive health -- the first service of its kind in the country.
"In our culture, we cannot have open conversations about sensitive subjects like sex, contraception, abortion and pregnancy. People want answers, but who do they ask? Not parents, not teachers, not elders. They hesitate to go to the doctor. People are shy to even utter the word 'condom' at a pharmacy," said the science graduate, who acknowledged that her family is like that as well. "But they can call here anonymously and ask any question. I give them all the information that they need. These are the people I need to convince for controlling India's population growth."
"I told her to be open and have no fear. She paused after every word," recalled Payalkumari, 27, the call center agent, who uses only her first name. "Then she slowly opened up. She was newly married. She said her mother-in-law wanted her to have a child right away, but she was not ready to. She asked, 'Is there some contraception that I can use secretly and nobody else will get to know in the family?'
"Payalkumari has taken hundreds of such calls since June, when India's government-sponsored National Population Stabilization Fund opened a call center to provide reliable information about such socially taboo subjects as family planning, contraception and reproductive health -- the first service of its kind in the country.
"In our culture, we cannot have open conversations about sensitive subjects like sex, contraception, abortion and pregnancy. People want answers, but who do they ask? Not parents, not teachers, not elders. They hesitate to go to the doctor. People are shy to even utter the word 'condom' at a pharmacy," said the science graduate, who acknowledged that her family is like that as well. "But they can call here anonymously and ask any question. I give them all the information that they need. These are the people I need to convince for controlling India's population growth."
Read Full Article at Washington Post
0 comments:
Post a Comment