Aarti Kelkar - Khambete

Nandatai and her 16 year old daughter Phula creep out of their houses quietly in the wee hours of the morning into the dark fields to relieve themselves before everyone wakes up. It is an everyday story as this is the only time in the day that they have privacy. “It is so shameful to go out in the fields during the day”, says Nandatai. “We have to hold our urine till it gets dark.

Dhanushkodi, bordered by the Bay of Bengal on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other, was a major point of entry to India until 1964, when a cyclone devastated the entire town [1]. Now, only a few fisherfolk remain. 

The fisherfolk in Kerala have their own distinctive culture and share a special relationship with the sea and the environment. Although they are an important community in the system, they have remained neglected despite the higher socio-economic progress of the state as a whole.

Shantamma woke up one morning with a high fever. She also had a sudden pain at the back of her eyes and severe joint pain. She had been finding it very difficult to move around and go on with her daily routine. And it was quite a tedious routine, which began at 5 a.m. She was a house maid and worked at multiple houses every day.

Yenepoya Medical and Dental College, some 15 kilometres away from Mangalore city near Delarekatte, is located in a developing neighbourhood; three other medical colleges, many schools and the Mangalore University are all situated in the same area. A software park is also expected to come up shortly.

Pallichal panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram is one of its best performing panchayats. It has received a number of awards for achieving high literacy levels, keeping up good sanitation practices and for implementing a number of agricultural and irrigation initiatives.

Karamana, the pride of Thiruvananthapuram and an important source of drinking water for the city, is now dreaded and diseased. Parts of the river have been closed to residents now because they are so polluted. What was once a thriving river is now being used as a garbage dump. I decided to trace the path of the river to see how bad the damage really was. 

Current evidence has shown that a large population of people in India practice open defecation and do not use toilets even when available.