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How KK Shailaja and her ‘Covid brigade’ won a victory against the virus
Fewer coronavirus patients have died in the state of Kerala than anywhere else in India. No wonder Vogue India named its health minister ‘leader of the year’
By mid-May, the Indian state of Kerala had contained the first wave of Covid-19, earning praise for the quick thinking and joined-up response of its health minister, KK Shailaja, and her team. By July, however, there were suggestions that those plaudits had been premature, and that Kerala’s Covid-19 response had come unstuck. Had it?
Shailaja Teacher – as the 64-year-old minister is affectionately known – had been expecting a surge in infections once India’s lockdown was lifted later in May. Kerala, home to 35 million people, has the country’s most robust health systems, but it is one of India’s poorer states, with one of its oldest populations. About 17% of workers leave to find jobs in neighbouring states, and there were fears about what would happen when, inevitably, these migrants returned. The authorities knew they could not keep Kerala’s borders shut or, given that the state relies on imports, keep it isolated from its neighbours.
Continue reading...Caste-based area names to be changed across Indian state to ‘increase unity’
Millions of people in Maharashtra to have neighbourhoods renamed but critics say plan means little without behavioural change
The names of neighbourhoods in the Indian state of Maharashtra based on the caste of people who have traditionally lived there are to be be changed, to reflect the country’s evolving attitudes.
In the same way Indian surnames reveal the caste to which a person belongs, neighbourhoods have acquired names based on the caste of the community that predominates.
Continue reading...Four men charged with rape and murder of Dalit woman in India
Case prompts nationwide protests and further highlights country’s endemic problem of sexual violence
Four men have been charged with the gang rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in India, a case that prompted nationwide protests and drew a fresh spotlight on India’s endemic problem of sexual violence.
In September in Hathras, a small village in Uttar Pradesh, the 19-year-old woman was working in the fields when she was pounced on by four older men who dragged her to a field, attacked her and then tried to strangle her with her shawl.
Continue reading...Going the extra milestone: Mumbai preserves remnants of colonial past
Over the decades many of the city’s stone markers have been submerged in concrete, but a plan is underway to restore them
Buried for years under Mumbai’s new roads and ever-increasing layers of development, the British passion for cartography is set to rise up on the city’s streets again thanks to a project to preserve its colonial milestones.
When workers from Mumbai municipal corporation (BMC) were demolishing unauthorised buildings three years ago, they unearthed a basalt stone marker with a pyramidal top and a Roman numeral on it – a British milestone and one of 16 laid out in the early 19th century on the road between Horniman Circle and Sion, then the city’s outer limit.
Continue reading...How does a pregnant woman get to hospital when there’s no road? By stretcher …
Women from the mountains of Uttarakhand in India have been guaranteed palanquins so that they can reach vital transport
Narendra Kumar is going to become a father in early January. His wife, Kavita, became pregnant two months after they got married in February and since then he has been worrying about getting her to hospital when the time comes.
It’s a steep three-kilometre walk along a narrow, unpaved mountain path through oak and rhododendron forests from their village of Gwalakot to the main road where they could pick up a car or ambulance to ferry them to hospital in Nainital.
Continue reading...Indian farmers’ protests – in pictures
Tens of thousands of protesting Indian farmers are camping along at least five major highways on the outskirts of New Delhi and have said they won’t leave until the government rolls back new laws on agricultural reform that they say will drive down crop prices and devastate their earnings
Continue reading...Digging in: on the frontlines as farmers lay siege to Delhi
Donations flood in to community kitchens as farmers protest against liberalisation of agriculture sector
When the sacks were ripped opened, almonds poured out, more than 10,000kg of them. It was not the first donation that had been sent to the Indian farmers defiantly camped out along the periphery of Delhi. In previous days trucks had rolled up and disgorged sacks of rice, pulses, flour, vegetables, sugar, tea and biscuits.
“This is food being sent by supporters from all over India and from as far as England and Canada. There is no shortage of food. We have enough to eat for months,” said Jaswinder Pal Singh, a farmer from Punjab.
Continue reading...Sydney boy with autism loses speech while stranded in India due to Covid
Australian mum desperate for flight home after autistic son stops talking without vital therapy
A four-year-old Sydney boy with autism stranded in India and separated from his father since March has missed specialist treatment for so long he has become non-verbal.
Concerns for the health of Yuvraj Krishna and other Australians stranded overseas have been raised by Labor’s shadow home affairs minister, Kristina Keneally, who is urging the Morrison government to intervene and help reunite the family.
Continue reading...‘It’s not a grave we must fit in’: the Kashmir women fighting for marital rights
Women are slowly gaining rights and finding the strength to shake off the social taboos around ending a bad relationship
Parveena Jabeen was all set to get married, but in Kashmir weddings are extravagant affairs.
Traditionally, brides in the valley of Kashmir would take a trousseau with them to the groom’s house, including clothes, jewellery, makeup, gifts for the in-laws and even furniture.
Continue reading...Nationwide farmers’ strike shuts down large parts of India
Protests against new agriculture laws hits transport, shops and markets across the country
Farmers in India have shut down swathes of the country’s transport, shops and markets as they escalated their protests against new agriculture laws with the launch of a national strike.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers blocked all roads into the capital Delhi for most of the day, and across the country demonstrated on railway lines and highways and called for a shutdown of shops, in a effort to pressurise the government into repealing new agriculture laws they say will leave them poverty stricken and at the mercy of corporations.
Continue reading...India’s biggest challenge: how to vaccinate 1.3bn people against Covid-19?
Analysis: Even with the world’s largest vaccination scheme already in place, the distribution at this scale has huge potential pitfalls
India’s claim to fame is staggering scale of its general elections, with 900 million voters mobilised across 1 million polling stations, to choose from 8,000 candidates across a landmass spanning 2,000 miles north to south and pretty much the same east to west.
But now the country has to go one better. India must vaccinate 1.3bn people against Covid-19 – twice and twice as fast. With more than 9 million confirmed cases of coronavirus and a battered economy, how will the country meet this challenge?
Continue reading...India summons Canada envoy as row deepens over Trudeau’s protest remarks
- India condemns ‘unacceptable interference’ from Canadian PM
- Trudeau called clashes between police and farmers ‘concerning’
India has summoned Canada’s top diplomat to protest at comments by Justin Trudeau on recent mass protests by farmers in the country. Indian officials warned that continued “interference” in domestic affairs could harm relations between the two countries.
Related: Indian farmers march on Delhi in protest against agriculture laws
Continue reading...All change: India’s railways bring back tea in clay cups in bid to banish plastics
Stations switch to humble earthen kulhads in move to cut down on toxic waste and boost incomes of village potters
A small and humble relic from India’s past is about to stage a major comeback. At all 7,000 railway stations in the country, tea will be served in earthen cups known as kulhads.
The kulhads, redolent of a bygone pastoral era, are unpainted, unglazed and have no handles, but are perfectly biodegradable and environment-friendly, which is why the country’s railways minister, Piyush Goyal, has said they will replace plastic cups as part of the government’s goal of making India free of single-use plastic.
Continue reading...RoboDoc: how India’s robots are taking on Covid patient care
The pandemic has spurred on robotics companies building machines to perform tasks in hospitals and other industries
Standing just 5ft tall, Mitra navigates around the hospital wards, guided by facial recognition technology and with a chest-mounted tablet that allows patients and their loved ones to see each other.
Developed in recent years by the Bengaluru startup Invento Robotics, Mitra costs around $13,600 (£10,000) and – due to the reduced risk of infection to doctors – has become hugely popular in Indian hospitals during the pandemic.
Continue reading...BBC’s A Suitable Boy rankles ‘love jihad’ conspiracy theorists in India
BJP reaction to depiction of Hindu-Muslim romance follows recent rows over interfaith marriages
When the BBC’s adaptation of Vikram’s Seth’s novel A Suitable Boy recently landed on Indian Netflix it did not take long for the fanfare to turn to controversy.
The series, it was claimed by politicians from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), had “hurt religious sentiments” of Hindus by depicting the lead character, a Hindu girl called Lata, passionately kissing a Muslim boy against the backdrop of a temple.
Continue reading...Will everyone in the world have access to a Covid vaccine? – video explainer
The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine is showing promise but it is premature to say the end of the pandemic is nigh. Several rich countries have signed a 'frenzy of deals' that could prevent many poor nations from getting access to immunisation until at least 2024. Also, many drug firms are potentially refusing to waive patents and other intellectual property rights in order to secure exclusive rights to any cure.
Michael Safi, the Guardian's international correspondent, explains why 'vaccine nationalisation' could scupper global efforts to kill the virus and examines what is being done to tackle the issue
Continue reading...‘I want to give what I never had’: the trans mum taking in abandoned children in India
Manisha was shunned as a child by her family and ended up on the streets – now she dreams of opening an orphanage
When Manisha walks into her rented room, crestfallen at having earned little money at work, her children rush to the door and cluster around, welcoming her with hugs. “When I feel their arms around me, my worries just melt away,” she says.
Manisha, a transgender woman who goes by only one name, is not their biological mother. She has taken in eight abandoned children over the years and now, aged 35, looks after six, two having recently left to get married.
Continue reading...The Indian school where students pay for lessons with plastic waste
Villagers once burned the toxic waste as fuel, but a pioneering couple’s radical education model uses it much more creatively
Every morning, students in Assam’s Pamohi village go to school clutching a bag of plastic waste, in exchange for which they will get their day’s lessons.
Akshar School, founded by Mazin Mukhtar, 32, and his wife Parmita Sarma, 30, has turned its pupils into ecowarriors by waiving school fees and helping to stop local people burning used plastic.
Continue reading...Elephant trapped in well in India rescued during 12-hour crane operation – video
Forest staff and villagers in the Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu hoisted an elephant out of the bottom of a well in an operation that took more than 12 hours. A farmer heard the cries of the elephant and alerted local authorities who arrived at the 55ft-deep (16.7-metre) well with a team of 50.
Despite the depth of the well, the water inside was shallow and was pumped out to make it easier to access the 25-year-old male elephant. Two excavators, trucks and a crane were used in the operation, which brought the elephant out unharmed.
The elephant will be released in the nearby Hosur forest area
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