Politico-moral Transactions in Indian AIDS Service: Confidentiality, Rights and New Modalities of Governance

This article examines the rise of non-governmental AIDS service in India as a space of cultural politics and of possibilities for social transformation. Drawing on ethnographic material from an AIDS service NGO in an urban North Indian setting, and the network of organizations that it is part of, the article describes the emergence of a transnationally mobile community of AIDS experts, their relationship to the non-governmental and the state and the circulation of ideas and practices between the global and the local. It focuses on the politico-moral transactions around confidentiality and embedded within it, the discourse of rights to show how they reflect changing configurations of governance and citizenship, and redefinitions of health.