India: Married as Children
Posted on June 3, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Health, International, women.
PITHAKHAITI, India — Growing up in a small village in northeastern India, Hasina Khatun spent her days helping her aunt around the house and playing with her siblings. She did not drop out of school; she never started. Hasina began menstruating at the age of 13 and soon after her aunt, who raised her after her mother died, told her it was time to get married. Hasina did not understand what her aunt meant, or that her life was about to change dramatically.
“I thought marriage was a game,” Hasina says as she sits in a bamboo home in her husband’s village. She fidgets with her orange, black and green sari that covers her head and falls over her breasts, unusually big for her tiny frame. Hasina is now 15 and five months pregnant.
Nearly half of girls in India are married before they turn 18, according to the International Center for Research on Women, making India home to a third of the world’s child brides. In India, there is often social pressure on women to give birth soon after marriage to prove their fertility. Child brides like Hasina — even though their bodies are often too small and undeveloped to handle the burden of a pregnancy — are no exception.
Child marriage increases the chances of a maternal death due to an increase in the likelihood of pregnancy complications combined with lack of knowledge about maternal health, lack of control over medical decisions and lack of access to timely and adequate health care. A girl who gives birth under the age of 15 is five times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than a woman in her 20s, according to the United Nations Population Fund. Girls 15 to 19 are twice as likely to die.
Continue reading and view the slideshow at GlobalPost.
No Comments
India: The Challenge of Educating Muslim Girls
Posted on June 1, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Health, International, women.
VIHOOR, India — The air feels cool at this early hour in the village.
As roosters yap away, a small truck delivers a crate of plastic bags filled with fresh milk to a roadside shop. A man rides by on a bicycle with a girl in her school uniform sitting in front and two little girls behind him.
On both sides of the road, girls in matching blue and white outfits gather at the bus stops. A young one with braided pigtails and a backpack waits patiently. An older one wearing a white headscarf and matching pants soon joins her, and a mother dressed in a black burqa walks them to school.
In Vihoor village on the Konkan Coast about 100 miles south of Mumbai, the Muslim women almost all stay at home raising their children, and when they go out, they virtually all wear the burqa. In many ways, the village is conservative and deeply entrenched in tradition, yet family after family here said their community is undergoing a significant if gradual change: more girls are going to school, and for longer.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
No Comments
Health Food Booms in India
Posted on June 1, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Business, Health, International.
MUMBAI, India — As I devour a (delicious) frozen yogurt, store manager Ankush Chopra tells me that Indian celebrities frequently visit his Mumbai shop. He rattles off names of Bollywood stars and then pulls out his mobile phone to show me proof. He turns his phone to me so I can see the photograph he took of one such actor, Jackie Shroff, wearing sunglasses and sitting in his car in front of the store.
“He has taken the ‘berry blast’ flavor, one medium, one small,” Chopra tells me. “With all the berries [as toppings] – strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and blackberry.”
Bollywood actress Raveena Tandon prefers the original flavor, Chopra adds.
As we chat in the store’s outdoor seating in Mumbai’s relatively posh Pali Hill neighborhood, a deliveryman from the nearby market walks up to the shop, carrying a two-foot wide basket of fresh strawberries on his head.
Cocoberry, India’s first non-fat premium frozen yogurt, opened a year ago in an effort to capitalize on a rising demand for health food among India’s growing class of wealthy consumers. The health food market, measured at $92 million in the end of 2008, is expected to nearly triple in size by the end of 2013, according to Shushmul Maheshwari, the chief executive of market-research company RNCOS.
The beginning of an organized, formal market for health food began a few years ago when big retailers began offering health products in their stores, Maheshwari wrote in an email. This developed as a result of a rise in education level and the emergence of strong advertising channels by which retailers could reach consumers.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
No Comments
My Maroon Velvet Cave to Goa
Posted on June 1, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International.
GOA, India — For 800 rupees ($17) I got a spot on a sleeper bus from Mumbai to Goa. I’ve taken an overnight train in India with sleeping compartments (see my story on unintentionally joining India’s masses and peeing on train tracks). But before this trip to Goa, I didn’t even know so-called sleeper buses existed. I could not imagine what they looked like or how one could create a bed on a bus.
Thanks to Google, I got some photos before my trip to help me visualize the dreaming while busing experience. And thanks to Twitter, I got some input before the journey. @dhempe confirmed these sleeper buses exist and wrote, “yup thr r sleeper buses which r very comfortable.”
But then @aparnaandhare chimed in: “except when the driver decides to speed around a corner and you are terrified of falling!”
Eek, maybe this was a bad idea.
@SudhaKanago added: “I had also heard about shady things that go on in the dark 
”
@AndrewBuncombe, the Independent’s Asia correspondent who was recently shot while reporting from Bangkok, wrote “That counts as brave. Will you be able to Tweet from the bunk?”
My transportation choice to the beach was not supposed to be “brave.”
But I needed a break for a couple days, and the pina coladas on the beach were calling.
The bus arrived at the Bandra long-distance bus station — which consists of a couple benches by the side of the road — and my brave mode of transport did not look particularly impressive. The windows were tinted black so I couldn’t actually see inside. I ran over to the man checking tickets, eager to be first on line, and then hopped onto the bus, peaking my head around the driver’s seat and into the vehicle of mystery.
Neither the Google pictures nor the friendly tweets had prepared me for the real thing. I don’t mean to be cheesy, but there’s no other way to describe it accurately — a sleeper bus is super cool.
Mine consisted of two layers of beds, like bunk beds, on each side of the aisle. Everything was maroon and velvet. Maroon velvet cushions, maroon velvet curtains on the windows, maroon velvet curtains blocking out the aisle, maroon velvet ceiling.
I climbed up a metal ladder on the side, awkwardly plunking myself, laptop, camera and beach towel into my compartment. I wrapped a metal chain around my camera and laptop (and, with no where to hook it, around me), spread my beach towel over my legs like a blanket and lied down.
To my surprise and delight, a sleeper bus is incredibly comfortable. Arguably more comfortable than my own bed. Resting my head on the built-in pillow, I glanced at the ceiling and curtains, ran my fingers along the bedding and felt like I was in a super soft maroon cave. As a lay in the bus horizontal, I pulled back the curtain and watched the Mumbai traffic as we headed out of town.
From this view, even the traffic seemed lovely.
Ten hours later, when the bus driver would only pause at the roadside for the men to pee and refuse to stop at a public restroom, and the little boys would repeatedly bounce up and down in the aisle, popping their heads into my compartment every six minutes, I saw the sleeper bus a little differently.
But those first 10 minutes were delightful.
This was originally published on True/Slant.
No Comments
India: The Pimped Out Rickshaw
Posted on May 28, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Business, International.
MUMBAI, India — I tell the driver where I’m going and then duck into the auto rickshaw’s passenger compartment. I rummage through my purse, looking for my iPod to block out the honking on Mumbai’s busy streets. I put on PRI’s “The World” and settle in for the bumpy ride ahead. But as the news begins to play, I notice something is off.
In front of me, attached to the back of the driver’s seat, a pouch made of sparkling red and black faux snakeskin holds a selection of the day’s Hindi newspapers. I glance down at my seat — matching snakeskin. I slowly look around the rickshaw and notice a first-aid kid, a small fire extinguisher and containers holding tissues and a notebook and pen. Red and blue floral fabric with rug-like fringes decorates the top. An angle statue holds up the meter, speakers line the back and two silver vases with plastic flowers sit on a built-in dashboard above the steering wheel.
This is one pimped out rickshaw.
“Very fancy,” I say to the driver, Aresh Ghatge. He laughs and nods his head.
“This is my BMW,” Ghatge says a month later when we meet in Bandra, a Mumbai suburb. Ghatge’s wearing loose white cotton pants, matching top and traditional leather Kolhapuri sandals, named after a town about 400 kilometers south of Mumbai. A brass triangle-shaped badge reading, “Mumbai Cab Driver 144702,” attached to his keychain hangs from a buttonhole near his collar. “I treat my rickshaw like it’s my first wife,” he says through a translator. “I want to make it comfortable for my passengers, like a home.”
India’s financial capital is a booming, fast-paced city that — despite its overcrowded trains and exorbitantly expensive housing — attracts much of the country’s hardest working and most innovative young people. Aspiring actors and dancers leave families behind, rent out tiny rooms in far-flung suburbs and scrounge for auditions as they hope to become Bollywood’s next biggest star. Young men with little to no education set up their own mini shops selling the palate cleanser paan or the local snack pani puri.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
No Comments
Twitter in India: Are You Following the God of Cricket?
Posted on May 12, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
MUMBAI, India — A cricket star took India by storm last week when he joined Twitter and began racking up followers at the rate of almost 4,500 an hour. Within the first 24 hours, Sachin Tendulkar’s following reached almost 80,000, sparking a media frenzy and countless tweets about the so-called god of cricket joining the social networking site.
Local Indian publications pounced on the story, and the following day, the Mumbai Mirror splashed across its front page: “Sachin Breaks Record With Tweet Nothings.”
Everything from which personal photographs he uploaded to how his follower statistics compared to other Indian celebrities (he outdid Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s day one) became fodder for an article.
The reaction stems from India’s obsession with cricket, Tendulkar and, increasingly, social media. “India’s love for cricket verges on the pathological,” Jason Overdorf wrote in GlobalPost in March.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
Follow Hanna on Twitter.
No Comments
One Mother’s Story: A Casualty of Three Delays
Posted on May 11, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Health, International, women.
DIBRUGARH, India — One night in late March, about 24 weeks into her pregnancy, Sulekha Lohar woke feeling ill. Sharing a bed with her husband and two young sons, she felt her chest pounding and her legs swell. She began convulsing. After about an hour, her husband, not knowing what to do, decided to seek help from his parents.
Too poor to own a phone, Bhangru Lohar left his wife in bed and rushed from his humble home with a tin roof and mud floors down a dark, dirt path of the Ghorijan Tea Estate in upper Assam, past the piles of firewood, bamboo fences and homes of other tea workers, to his parents’ house. He woke his father, Rama Lohar, who woke the neighbors, and the men decided to bring Sulekha to the tea company’s health center, according to Bhangru and Rama, who independently told the Pulitzer Center this story.
There are three ways in which necessary treatment for pregnant mothers can be delayed that increases the chances of a maternal death, according to maternal health specialists. The first delay can occur when the mother or family first decides to seek appropriate medical care for a pregnancy or labor complication.
Continue reading on the Huffington Post.
This reporting was sponsored by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Learn more about this reporting project.
Follow Hanna on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Hanna_India
No Comments
Three Wives, 10 Kids Is Enough
Posted on May 3, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Health, International, women.
TENGATOLI, India — The air crackles as a team of medical staff and crew walk across a peanut field, lugging a big generator from their boat into a village of 850 people. Near a collection of thatchroof homes, the crew sets up a projector on the dirt floor of a small bamboo structure that also serves as the community’s schoolhouse. Well, it occasionally serves as a schoolhouse. The teacher lives on the mainland, a three to four-hour boat ride away, and only makes the journey along the Brahmaputra River to Tengatoli village in lower Assam to teach once a month. Sometimes once every two months.
Barefoot children and mothers holding infants trickle into the school-turned-cinema hall. The boat staff, part of a boat clinic run by the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research with funding from the Indian government and UNICEF (see previous blog post on C-NES and the boat clinics), show a video on maternal and child health, including the importance of family planning.
Some of the video clips are in Assamese, and even though many in the crowd only speak Bengali, the language barrier does not seem to dissuade them from watching. Many who live on this island without electricity or televisions have never before seen a video.
One of the women watching is Anuwara Bezum. Dressed in a vibrant yellow, orange and red sari, she wears her head covered, an assortment of bangles and a nose ring. Bezum, who does not know her age but thinks she is about 30, grew up in a village on the mainland. Like many of the girls in her community, she got married at 12 or 13. She left her family and friends and moved to her husband’s village on the island. Bezum had her first child at around age 15, she says as she slowly rocks her fourth and youngest in her arms. This baby will be her last, she says through a translator.
Continue reading at the HuffingtonPost.
This reporting was sponsored by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Learn more about this reporting project.
Follow Hanna on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Hanna_India
No Comments
India: Community Journalism in the Slums
Posted on April 27, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media, women.
MUMBAI, India — Zulekha Sayyed sits with the men. They talk about the garbage dump directly behind their community and how the children have been playing in it and getting sick. As the wife of one of the men serves the group tea, the men say the dump’s stench gets worse when night falls.
The wife returns to the kitchen. The mother-in-law sits on the floor and serves her grandchildren breakfast. She tears off a piece of roti, kneads it in a metal bowl of milk and sugar and then places the bite in the toddler’s mouth.
Zulekha, 21, keeps talking. She looks directly into the eyes of the men, three construction supervisors who all live in a poor area of Ghatkopar, a suburb of Mumbai. She asks them questions. She laughs with them. She tells them what she thinks they should do to force the local government to respond to their complaints.
In a world where women usually observe quietly, Zulekha — a community journalist who reports on the very slum she lives in — stands out for her bold willingness to work for change.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
No Comments
On Remote Island Village, Health Worker Challenges Tradition
Posted on April 27, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Health, International, women.
AZIMOR, India — After a couple hours of cruising down the Brahmaputra River, the boat clinic arrives at a desolate mud bank. A fisherman nearby dips his pole into the water and pulls up a large net. Two community workers emerge from the boat and set off with a box of medical supplies towards the thatch-roof homes in the distance.
The doctors, nurses and I follow behind, zigzagging through the rain-soaked grass. We take off our shoes to wade through the flooded areas. The air feels fresh and crisp. With no roads or vehicles on the island, the only sounds we hear are roosters, cows and our feet sloshing through the water.
About 1,200 Bengali-speaking Muslims live in Azimor village. They have no electricity, toilets or clean drinking water. There is a primary school, which consists of a one-room structure made out of bamboo walls and a tin roof. The week before our arrival a storm had picked up the school and dropped it off in another part of the village.
Continue reading at True/Slant.
This reporting was sponsored by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Learn more about this reporting project.
Follow Hanna’s tweets from Assam @Hanna_India
