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Another group often identified as the key high-risk group is India is the truck drivers. Popular Hindu accepts polygamy from men, hence it is not uncommon for truck drivers to solicit the services of sex workers during long absences from home. 24-34% of truck drivers in various surveys have reported engaging in sex with commercial sex workers. ( avert) Sometimes, this occurs at roadside ‘dhabas’, which act as both brothels and hotels for truck drivers. In other cases, drivers stop to pick up women by the side of the road, and transport them to another area after they have had sex with them. Both truck drivers and sex workers move from area to area, often unaware that they are infected with HIV. (avert)
There are no statistics available that provide the number of truck drivers per state. However, the census of India does break down the population of industrial workers into different categories such as: persons who work in Hotels and Restaurants, Transport, Storage and Communication, Agriculture, Mining, etc. The correlation between AIDS rate per 100,000 and percent population that works in ‘Transport, Storage and Communication’ was .156 well below the required .296 needed to attain a 90% confidence limit. I thought that perhaps the general category was too broad and tried to get more accurate numbers by correlating only the percent males who work in Transport, Storage and communication. However, the numbers of women working under Transport, Storage and Communication were so small that the correlation only changed from .1556 to .1559. (Table 2) Next I moved on to another obvious high-risk group, the sex workers. Again, due to the illegitimacy of their profession, no direct statistics for the number of sex workers by state exist. So, I used four indicators that would give an idea of the general quality of life and the presence of marginal population in each state. I correlated literacy rate, rate of vagrancy, rates of homeless population
and percent institutionalized population to AIDS rate per 100,000 in each state. The correlations of literacy rate and institutionalized population rate were .231 and .217 respectively, once again too weak to establish any kind of relationship. (Table 3, Map 1, Map 2) Even more absurd were the rate of vagrancy and the percent population below poverty line. The correlations were not only weak but also negative, -.073 and-.125 respectively. The only correlation I did find was between AIDS rate per 100,000 and percent of nonworking pensioners. Only the correlation was exactly the opposite of what I had expected. According to the numbers found on NACO, or National AIDS Control Organization, most amount of AIDS cases occur in males of ages 15-44. Hence, I expected a strong negative correlation between people who would fall out of this age group and have some financial support as well. When in fact there was a .316 correlation, indicating that at least 90% of the time there exists a relationship between people who receive pensions and AIDS. (Table 4, Map 3)
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