Archive by Author
Homai Vyarawalla, India’s First Female Photojournalist, Showcased in Mumbai
Posted on March 14, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under India, International, Media, women.
An exhibition featuring the work of India’s first female photojournalist is showing at the National Gallery of Modern Art through April 11. The collection of about 150 photographs by Homai Vyarawalla includes images of the last days of the British Empire, the Indian Independence movement and the birth and subsequent struggles of a new nation.
Ms. Vyarawalla, who is now 97, spent most of her career working for the British Information Services, which later became the British High Commission. Many of her photographs depict important political leaders and events in India’s modern history. These include the first flag-hoisting ceremony at Red Fort and the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi.
The exhibition (Sir Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Fort; 91-22-2288-1971) also includes photographs of Indians enjoying leisure time at cultural events, social gatherings, school functions and private institutions, said Sabeena Gadihoke, a curator and the author of a biographical book on the photographer, “Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla.”
Continue reading at NYTimes.com.
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Surrogacy Turned Nightmare in Mumbai
Posted on March 10, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Health, India, International, women.
MUMBAI, India — “Chai Baby,” “Baby Masala” and “Made in India.” These are a few of the many blogs written by infertile Westerners trying to start a family through surrogacy in India. For the most part, the blogs tell tales of frustration, nervous anticipation and joy.
Commercial surrogacy has boomed in recent years as a result of India’s low cost of labor, lack of regulations and relatively inexpensive yet high quality medical care.
Surrogacy, which can cost upwards of $70,000 in the United States, is only a quarter of that in India. The Indian women who carry the babies earn about $5,000 to $7,000, upwards of 10 years’ salary for rural Indians.
“India is fast becoming a hub for surrogacy,” said Amit Karkhanis, a lawyer in Mumbai whose office, KayLegal, gets one new query a day from someone who wants to come to India to have a baby via surrogacy. “Five years ago, we were not even doing this.”
But not every surrogacy story has a happy ending, and given the fact that each country has its own laws on the matter, some Westerners who have engaged in the practice in India are finding themselves in legal limbo. As a result, the Indian government may soon regulate the surrogacy industry.
Consider the case of Kari Ann Volden, from Norway.
Continue reading from GlobalPost.
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Dying for the Basics (Audio)
Posted on February 25, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Health, India, International, women.
CBC Radio’s Dispatches is replaying my story on maternal mortality in Assam’s tea gardens as well as an interview with me.
“If Sulekha Lohar only had access to an ambulance instead of that handcart in rural India. If the local clinic just had a doctor instead of empty shelves. If the nearest hospital just had a blood bank, her children might still have their mother. Troubling public health issues facing women in the developing world have been the focue of Hanna Ingber Win’s work. ”
Listen to the story and interview with me.
Follow me on Twitter: Hanna_India
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Ross Dunkley, Former Head of The Myanmar Times, Arrested in Burma
Posted on February 17, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Burma, International, Media.
MUMBAI, India — There was a time when Ross Dunkley, my former boss at the Myanmar Times, was a powerful man. Today, he sits in a prison cell.
I remember Ross storming into the newsroom in Rangoon after having stayed up all night drinking. Ross, a tall Australian with broad shoulders, wore a power suit. His head was bald and shiny.
“Come on, Hanna,” he commanded, waving his arm in the air. “We’re going to lunch.”
We arrived at Trader’s Hotel. “Sake, sake!” Ross shouted at a young Burmese woman standing near the entrance. She looked confused and walked off.
“Sake, sake!” Ross yelled. Another woman brought over a kettle, which Ross took out of her hands. He poured me a cup.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I have articles left to edit.”
Ross pushed the cup closer to my face. “When your boss tells you to drink, you drink!”
The Burmese junta detained Ross, the publisher and co-founder of the Myanmar Times, on Feb. 10, and today he is being held at the infamous Insein prison in Rangoon. Officially he’s been arrested for immigration violations, but there is speculation he will also be charged with possession of drugs and prostitution.
Ross, who founded the paper in 2000 with a once-powerful Burmese businessman, has a controversial reputation. But most Burma watchers assume his arrest has nothing to do with sudden allegations of age-old behavior.
Instead, it’s being seen as evidence of a government doing everything it can to cling to power. Ross’ arrest comes during a time of transition in Burma, and the government has responded to this period of possible instability by tightening control, said Toe Zaw Latt, the Thailand bureau chief of Democratic Voice of Burma, a leading news outlet on Burma run by exiles.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
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A Remarkable Rape Case
Posted on February 8, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Crime, India, International, women.
MUMBAI, India — A poor girl in northern India is a member of the lowest caste. She winds up in jail after fleeing her alleged rapists. These alleged rapists are powerful men.
What are the odds the story gets better from here?
Slim, to say the least.
“Here child marriage is rampant, abuse of minor girls is rampant, abductions are very frequent,” said Tapas Kumar Chakraborty, a community volunteer and journalist in Uttar Pradesh, where the girl lives. “The powerful men and the gangsters get away with everything.”
And yet, the story of this girl appears to be an exception — at least so far.
Months after losing her mother, this teenage girl living in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, was abducted. The girl’s father, a farm laborer, pleaded with a state assemblyman to help him find his daughter. The legislator helped rescue the girl and then offered to let her live with him as his domestic help. The father agreed.
“He thought she would be safe there,” said Chakraborty. “But that didn’t happen unfortunately.”
The legislator, Purshottam Naresh Dwivedi, and three other men allegedly raped and beat the 17-year-old repeatedly. The girl tried to flee, but she was caught, beaten, accused of theft and handed over to the police, according to news reports. The girl, a minor, spent a month in jail.
It is not uncommon for powerful men who sexually assault or exploit women in India to use their money or political connections to shield themselves from legal consequences.
“This is one such reported case. There are many, many, many such unreported cases,” said Amitabh Kumbar of the Centre for Social Research. “Exploitation of poor women by politicians is a common trait not just in UP [Uttar Pradesh] but across the country.”
But thanks to a combination of factors connected to her own personality, an active civil society and political games in her state, the girl has not only been freed from jail, but the politician and other accused men have been arrested. Rahul Gandhi, the Congress Party’s general secretary and heir apparent as prime minister, traveled to Uttar Pradesh on Monday and met with the girl at her village.
In a place like Banda, there is usually little chance that a poor girl will manage to get out of jail or that authorities will arrest powerful men.
Why has this case turned out differently?
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
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India: ‘Wife-beating diplomat’ shames nation
Posted on January 26, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Crime, India, International, Media, women.
MUMBAI, India — “Envoy shames India.” “India-UK diplomatic row.” “Diplomatic cover for domestic violence?” “Wife beating hardly diplomatic.” These are some recent headlines peppering Indian news outlets.
Put plainly, the case of a senior Indian diplomat allegedly beating up his wife at their London home has caused quite a stir. Indians are debating everything from the role of diplomatic immunity to what extent one allegedly violent husband can shame an entire nation.
But perhaps most strikingly, the case reflects India’s complicated relationship with and often tolerance for domestic violence. In India, many communities still condone marital abuse.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
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In God’s Own Country
Posted on January 24, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under India, International, travel.
The first night my mother and stepfather arrived in Mumbai, I stuffed them into an auto-rickshaw and took them to my local Bandra (northwest Mumbai) hangout for a bite to eat, washed down with the obligatory Sula wine. On the way back to my apartment, my mother leaned her head out the rickshaw and stared in wonderment at the tiny shacks lining the road. She turned and whispered to me: “This is all fascinating. But, you know, I’m a little disappointed. We haven’t seen a cow yet.”
And from there our weeklong adventure began. Them seeing India through my eyes, and me seeing it through theirs.
We spent two days in Mumbai so they could get a sense of where I have been living for the past year, as I’ve worked as a GlobalPost correspondent. We did the tourist must-sees – the Gateway of India and Taj bathroom stop, National Gallery of Modern Art, Jehangir Art Gallery, a view of the Queen’s Necklace from Dome. After eating butter-pepper-garlic crab at Trishna, we took a rest outside the majestic Prince of Wales museum.
As we sat on a concrete divider, my mother took photographs of Indian families with their anklet-clad children, and Indian families took photos of us. We never made it into the museum.
Continue reading and see photographs from our trip to Mumbai and Kerala at India Abroad. (Use the zoom function at the top to read it.)
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India’s Own Ivy League?
Posted on January 17, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under India, International.
MUMBAI, India — You may not be able to take the Harvard out of Cambridge, but what are the odds India can grow its own Ivy League?
In an effort to boost the country’s presence on the global stage and improve the quality of its higher education, India has announced plans to create a so-called Indian Ivy League. The government hopes to build world-class universities that compete with the likes of Yale and Princeton, according to Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal.
The creation of Navratna Universities also aims to satisfy some of the increasing demand in India for higher education as the pool of lower middle-class and female students in this rapidly developing country grows.
Education experts in India applaud the government’s ambitions. However, they also question whether this goal will be possible in the current environment, where regulations are plentiful and funding can be scarce.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
Follow Hanna on Twitter: @Hanna_India.
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Indian Wedding Proposals Meet Bollywood
Posted on January 6, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Culture, India, International.
MUMBAI, India — He hired a helicopter to hover over his girlfriend’s building ($1,300) while musicians serenaded her from below ($335). He threw rose petals from the sky, then proposed with a diamond ring (5 carats). She said yes (priceless).
A typical Indian wedding involves hundreds of guests, days of festivities and countless glittery outfits. But for many of India’s wealthiest young lovers, a traditionally extravagant wedding is no longer fabulous enough. It’s the proposal that really needs to sparkle.
From private yachts to personalized action movie sequences, more and more young lovers are popping the question with increasingly elaborate — often borderline outlandish — theatrics. One groom-to-be got a nightclub to stop the music long enough for him to propose to his girlfriend in front of a crowd that chanted on cue: “Say yes! Say yes!”
Enter the Mumbai company that offers to help its clients make their wildest wedding proposal dreams come true.
“We’re giving you what you dream,” said Bhabesh Mehta, the 28-year-old founder of MyGenie, which he describes as a personal occasion management company. “You tell me the weirdest thing; I can make it happen for you.”
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
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India Opens Restaurant for Vultures
Posted on January 3, 2011, by Hanna Ingber Win, under India, International, environment.
PHANSAD WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, India — Deep in the wildlife sanctuary, a swath of grasslands opens onto a clearing so dry the ground looks covered in yellow hay. In the middle of the clearing, leftover cow teeth, hooves and bones are strewn about. We have arrived, the forest officials say, at India’s vulture restaurant.
Vultures in India, Pakistan and Nepal began dying off two decades ago after a painkiller used to treat sick farm animals became popular in the region, according to environmentalists. Feasting on heavily medicated pack animals, the vultures were unknowingly bringing about their own demise.
In an effort to save the scavengers from extinction, the state of Maharashtra has embarked on a project to create a safe space where the birds can eat, mingle and table hop without accidentally being poisoned to death.
The so-called restaurant, which will have its grand opening this month, will serve vulture delicacies: cow, water buffalo and bullock carcasses. Forest officials will secure the carcasses from nearby villages, ensure the animals had not been treated with the poisonous chemical called diclofenac before they died and then bring them to this clearing in Phansad Wildlife Sanctuary in Raigad district, about 150 kilometers south of Mumbai.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
