A Stranger Truth: Lessons in Love, Leadership and Courage from India's Sex Workers by Ashok Alexander

A Stranger Truth: Lessons in Love, Leadership and Courage from India's Sex Workers by Ashok Alexander
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author has described his journey from being a high level consultant in one of the top consulting firms to leading a successful HIV prevention in the remote corners of India.

The author was pulled out from a lucrative job in Mc Kinsey to lead the HIV programme in India by none other than Bill Gates.

HIV was threatening to infect millions of Indians, thanks to their proclivity to have unprotected sex with commercial sex workers of all genders. The trucking fraternity was one which was threatened the most from a male perspective and of course the CSW were the most threatened from a female perspective.

The state of the CSW comes out, as expected, to be very pathetic. Not only did they have to face the fear of contacting HIV AIDS, they had to put up with social ostracism and live in the fear of the police and their male live partners.

The task was challenging and required a lot of meticulous planning and that is exactly what Ashok Alexander did. The result is for everyone to see. Thanks to actions taken by the author and his team with funding and guidance from the Microsoft CSR team, India has avoided an HIV AIDS pandemic.

The author has traced his growth from a naive person who had limited understanding of how the commercial sex work happens to leading an operation to ensure that they are safeguarded from all the dangers they were facing.

A fascinating read.

View all my reviews