Actor Preity Zinta is a very busy woman these days.

First of all, for the next one-and-a-half months her prime objective will be to ensure that her cricket team does well in the ongoing T20 tournament.

Then, once the tournament is over, she will take up a cause in a big way—she wants to campaign against corruption that ‘prevails at every tier of the state government’. For this she has decided to turn into an activist. “I had wanted to become an activist for a long time. I think the time has come,” says Preity.

In the midst of all this, we ask her about rumours of her wanting to sell off her stake in her cricket team for ‘personal’ reasons. She rubbishes them saying, “I plan to stay with the team as long as I can. Personal relations or equations don’t matter when we are working. My relation with the other owners and members of my team is as cohesive as any other team in the tournament.”

Coming back to the activist streak in her, Preity says Maharashtra would have taken long strides towards development had it not been for the ‘disease’ of people expecting their palms to be greased at all levels. “I don’t want to sound as if I am comparing Maharashtra with another state. But I’ve been to Gujarat and I saw that the level of corruption there is much less. When I saw that I wished the same thing would happen in Maharashtra,” she says.

When asked what she would promote during her campaign against corruption, she says, “I will advocate that a cut be given to government employees against every ‘lucrative’ project that is passed or completed by them. Or, maybe a part of the profits after a project gets completed successfully. In most private companies you get the work done and then you are rewarded with a small portion of the profit that comes in. I think if that system is put in place, then the government would soon be corruption free.”

Bollywood actor Preity Zinta was on Thursday named the Indian ambassador for the joint United Nations Programme on HIV-AIDS

As an ambassador, she will raise awareness on HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, with an emphasis on women and children. Zinta is even planning to involve her Indian Premiere League cricket team, Kings XI, in the awareness programme.

“The team members of Kings XI, they will be involved in a public service film to talk about HIV-AIDS. We are also in our first game with Delhi Daredevils, which is on March 13, going to have a toss done by a person living with HIV,” Zinta said.

“We will be doing a lot of on-ground…going and creating awareness, meeting people living with HIV. I think this is the first step and there is lots more to come,” she added.

She also said that awareness is also required in villages besides in the cities.

“I think although there are so many awareness programmes being done amongst the people but something is still lacking. People need to put more efforts in the awareness programmes,” Zinta said.

“Till now awareness programmes were conducted only in the cities but now we shall have to conduct it in the villages and rural areas of the country as well,” she added.

UNAIDS is a joint venture of the United Nations, bringing together the efforts and resources of ten UN organizations to help the world prevent new HIV infections, disseminate care for people living with HIV, and mitigate the impact of the epidemic.

The 2006 estimates of the National Aids Control Organization (NACO) suggest that about 2.4 million Indians are currently living with HIV.