BIG PHARMA, GENERIC DRUGS & LIVING WITH HIV
Vasanti Shinde, at home with two of her daughters Vrinda, 8 and Shruda, 10. Maharashtra. India ©Tom Pietrasik 2008 The struggle against the over-zealous patenting of life-saving drugs was dealt a victory in India last week. So it seemed an appropriate time to revisit my photographs, commissioned by UNDP, of Vasanti Shinde, an HIV-positive mother [...]
TWO INDIAS EXIST IN HEALTHCARE
The Guardian website now features a short film I made about a health project in rural India called Jan Swasthya Sayhog (JSS). I have photographed the JSS several times before and always felt that their ceaseless commitment to the rural community they serve together with their understanding of healthcare in India would warrant the making of [...]
ERADICATING POLIO IN INDIA
Administering the polio vaccination at a clinic inaugurated by the local Imam outside his madrassa in Moradabad. Polio eradication efforts are improved with the blessing of local community leaders. Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. India ©Tom Pietrasik 2006 Two weeks ago India announced that 12-months had elapsed since the country last recorded a new case of polio. [...]
INDIAN PHOTOGRAPHY TODAY EXHIBITION
These photographs will be displayed at Brighton’s AM Gallery from tomorrow as part of an exhibition called Indian Photography Today. The show will feature a diverse range of work from several photographers under the broad banner of contemporary Indian photography.
THE SAD STORY OF DHANGA BAIGA
Dhanga’s is not an isolated case. Thirty-three percent of Indians are underweight with a BMI (Body Mass Index) below 18.5 which, Dr Binayak Sen says amounts to a “genocide without bullets”. Sen, a public-health activist and advisor to the JSS, currently resides in prison, serving a life sentence on false charges of sedition. Sen’s real crime has been to expose the Chhattisgarh state government’s appalling failure to represent the interests of those to whom it was elected to serve: ordinary people like Dhanga Baiga.
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
Think of an Indian farmer and it is likely that you will conjure up the image of a man, dressed a dhoti – or perhaps wearing a turban – toiling in a field of wheat or rice. But as Neelam Prabhat of AROH pointed out to me last week, it is women who shoulder the burden of 70 to 80 percent of the agricultural work that takes place in India.
WHY INDIA’S COTTON FARMERS STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE
Sangam lost his mother several years ago when she committed suicide in a desperate bid to escape the misery of life with her alcoholic husband. I don’t know why Sangam’s now-estranged father turned to liquor but it is worth appreciating that the prevalence of alcoholism (and suicide) inevitably rises among populations immersed in the hopelessness of debt, contributing to individual ruin and the eventual undoing of communities. As a measure of the crisis in rural India, an average of 47 farmers a day committed suicide in 2009.
TEA, SAMOSAS AND TIGER RELOCATION
Rajasthan’s chief wildlife warden Ramesh Mehrotra took objection to a story that accompanied my photographs in National Geographic Adventure magazine. In his vexed letter, which seems only to have been published in the print edition of National Geographic Adventure, Mehrotra appeared slighted by writer Paul Kvinta’s critique of Rajasthan’s tiger relocation policy. Mehrotra apparently considered that the fine hospitality and pleasant company he offered us obliged Paul to write a glowing report on the tiger conservation effort. But how much worse it could be if the charms of official hospitality were ever to silence those who scrutinize policy and continue to argue that there are systemic problems with India’s tiger conservation strategy.
SCHOOLS IN INDIA
The quality of school education in India varies widely. From the Doon School in the foothills of the Himalayas which teaches the sons of India’s elite to the tens of thousands of dusty government schools that dot India’s rural plains, providing classes in rote-learning for the children of agricultural laborers. The photographs I have just featured in my gallery on south Indian students looks a school in Tamil Nadu that falls very much in the bottom half – though certainly not right at the bottom – of this scale.