Tag Archives: South-Asian

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.…