Taamul

By Allwin Jesudasan & Rajkamal Goswami An edited version of this article appears in the print edition of  Down To Earth, July 15, 2013 “Varsham muluka naa TV paathutu beedi suthitte irrupen. Varshathulle inthe oru vaaram oru kavalai illaame na inge thanguven.” (All year I sit in front of the TV, rolling beedis. In the one week that I spend here, I just relax and enjoy my stay here without worrying about anything else in the world) remarked a middle-aged woman ‘pilgrim’ from a small hamlet of Alangulam Taluk of Tirunelveli District of Southern Tamil Nadu.  She was replying to our query as to why she came to visit the the Sorimuthu Iyyanar Temple inside the Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) during the annual Adi-amavasya festival. We had asked this question because to us, it was difficult to understand the motivations that drove hundreds of thousands of people to travel and camp inside forests. During this festival a large area of the forest around the temp...

An edited version of this article was published in ( Down To Earth (August, 2012) “Rivers gave us the first great human civilizations. But what did we give back to our rivers?  Death?” – Ms. Sina Suchiang, a Khasi women working as a teacher in Brichornot Village, Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya Dusty and sooty landscape of Jaintia Hills. Narpuh Reserve Forest (RF), deep inside the Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya, is among the few good forest patches which has withstood the intense pressures of growth, development and mindless extraction of natural resources like coal and limestone. It also forms an important watershed area with many important rivers originating from the hills. We visited the forest in March and November last year looking for birds and primates as part of an ecological study. The 200 km and 9 hour long journey from Shillong to Pasadwar village, the range headquarters of Narpuh RF block 1, was dominated by large broom-grass plantations, coal and limestone mi...

A response to the World Health organisation and UNICEF’s report 'Diarrhoea: Why Children Are Still Dying and What Can Be Done' (2009), which  pointed out that India has the largest number of persons that defecate in the open worldwide. I strongly oppose this westernized view of sanitation & hygiene. Defecating in the open is not just a hygienic issue but a socio-cultural, historical, economic, political & environmental issue. The point of contention being that health is jeopardized due to open-defecation is highly ridiculous. I argue that its failure of the state which is primarily responsible for the poor health rather than the prevalent defecation practices. ·          Many cultures & society across India has age-old tradition of defecating in the open. Most parts where open defecation is practiced are parts with water scarcity & low rainfall. There are many community defecating practices which are of speci...