Agriculturalists reach out for contraceptives

LUDHIANA: Contraceptives at Kisan Mela, sounds different, but this is what was witnessed at the fair organized at Punjab Agricultural University where a stall having male contraceptives was set up on Tuesday.
A puppet show spreading AIDS awareness also proved to be an attraction for many of the farmers.
Namrata, the organizer of the puppet show who was working in collaboration with NACO, said the project aimed to spread awareness among the masses, including the rural folk and migrants.
The main aim was to shun the shyness factor and make available the contraceptives from nukkad shopwallah to a panwallah. In the rural area, mostly youngsters were using drugs and it was important to educate them regarding the risk of HIV and Kisan Melas were the best platform to educate the masses.
Another stall employee said that farmers were coming with a lot of queries and were purchasing the contraceptives. He added that through these street plays, the symptoms from the modes of transmission of AIDS all becomes easy to make the people understand.
Raman Deep Singh, a farmer, said that it was very difficult to ask for a contraceptive as there was hesitation to ask such thing in public but here most of the people did not know so many youngsters were seen making queries and purchasing contraceptives.
A farmer said asking for a contraceptive was a big taboo but spreading the message through puppets was a great thing. Most of the farmers had come to this stall out of curiosity.