Watching Bittal Devi deftly weave threads of different colours into a vibrant patchwork quilt, it’s hard to imagine that this 46-year-old’s hands have spent the better part of their life cleaning toilets.Born in Sava, a village in the state of Rajasthan in northwestern India, Devi is from a community that, down the centuries, has worked as ‘manual scavengers’.A caste-based profession, it condemns mostly women, but also men, to clean human excreta out of dry latrines with their hands, and carry it on their heads to disposal dumps. Many also clean sewers, septic tanks and open drains with no protective gear.
Year: 2015
Children starving to death in Pakistan’s drought-struck Tharparkar District
Children are bearing the brunt of the drought in Tharparkar, often the first to fall victim to diarrhoea and pneumonia brought on by malnutrition, Pakistan, Jan 3 2015 (IPS) – The main entrance to the Civil Hospital in Mithi, headquarters of the Tharparkar district in Pakistan’s southern Sindh Province, is blocked by a couple of men clad in traditional dress and turbans. They are trying to console a woman who is sobbing so heavily she has to gasp for breath.She lost her two-year-old son just moments ago and these men, both relations of hers, were the ones to carry the child into the hospital where doctors tried – and failed – to save him.
South American commodity boom drives deforestation and land conflicts
BOGOTA, Colombia — A commodity boom has helped pull millions out of poverty across South America over the past decade. It has also unleashed a new scramble for oil, minerals and cropland that is accelerating deforestation and fueling a new wave of land conflicts from Colombia to Chile.
So, you have a minimum wage job. Now what? For many, moving beyond the first rung is the hard part.
Every few months, at a community center in Adams Morgan, about 100 people gather for a celebration. They hold hands in a circle, hear a blessing, and then listen as the good news pours forth.
2015: The year Republicans strike back at Obama food policies
The Obama administration is becoming increasingly involved in what Americans put on their dinner plates and in their cereal bowls, from requiring school children to be served fruit to eliminating trans fats in doughnuts. But the new Republican Congress is already laying the groundwork to push back in 2015.
