#1. Blood Selling Service
First up in our investigation into local Indian services is the rather unlikely ‘Blood Selling Service’, available as an ‘underground service’ in many large cities.
Teen Darwaja, one of the most populated areas in the old Ahmedabad, used to be one of the hangouts for the ‘donors’ and agents.
Few years ago I had worked on a project with GAP (Gujarat Aids Awareness and Prevention Unit), working closely with the blood-selling homeless people of Ahmedabad. For a small payment, they sold upto 6 bottles of blood every month. The service was wholly managed by touts or agents, who gave every ‘commercial donor’ a code number. Once every week, the tout would go to the specific areas where the donors were likely to hang out, and shout out the code numbers. Some of the donors who turned up, would be driven in a van, to the buying organisation for ‘donation’. The system was profitable to all involved. The donors received a small ‘compensation, that helped them buy food and drugs. (Ofcourse, consequences on the health of the ‘donors’ as well as the ‘recipients’ of this blood were fatal, but profitability and survival needs overruled that.)
Rows of homeless people waiting outside this shop serves ‘Ram Roti’ or free food every evening. Donations are made to the shopkeeper from people who wish to help homeless people, and based on the amounts received, people are fed.
Over the last few days, we went back to places in the walled city where we would be able to meet and talk to some of the ‘blood sellers’. But things have changed. The atmosphere was a lot more chaotic, and people seemed angry and reluctant to talk. After a few inquiries it became clear that the ‘touts’ or ‘agents’ who manage this service, were certainly not interested in talking about this either. I also learnt that the founder of GAP, Radium Bhattacharya, who would be able to help me get in touch with these agents, sadly passed away a few months ago. Our deepest condolences to the family.
For our project, we had spent a lot of time here, as many of the people coming for Ram Roti would also ‘commercially donate’ their blood during the day.
The idea of selling blood commercially dates back to the 1940s when the blood transfusion system developed. In fact the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza depended partly on forcible ‘donations’ from political prisoners to stock his commercial blood bank, which was licensed by the US FDA, and exported its stock to the US and Europe. Today this is a crime and unacceptable in most parts of the world.
But here in Gujarat, this activity is prevalant, as a recent report quoting the Chief Medical Officer from Gandhinagar states. And our exploration into this ‘edge-service’ continues…
