Sukumar Shinde, 52, who sells food items and snacks in rural fairs, said, “Because of the lockdown, I had to throw away several food items as they have a shorter shelf life.” / credit: Sanket Jain
Balu Jadhav usually journeys through 60 villages 300 days a year, selling toys and artificial jewelry in India’s “jatras,” or rural village fairs.
So if Jadhav travels less than 1,000 miles a year, that’s a sign of distress.
“In the past two years, I covered only 150 miles,” he said.
His two-decade-long routine was broken in March 2020 when far-right Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown to curb a pandemic caused by COVID-19, the novel coronavirus. The lockdown was extended to 67 days, causing 121 million people to lose their jobs within the first month. Yet, with this lockdown, India couldn’t contain the coronavirus. Meanwhile, because case numbers ebbed and flowed for two years, district administrators banned fairs.
With a history of over 150 years, these fairs remain an important source of income for marginalized people. In Jadhav’s home state of Maharashtra, located on India’s Arabian Sea coast, almost every village hosts an annual fair for a couple of days. Jatras are held in reverence of local deities. Rural vendors sell a variety of items, including toys, posters of regional deities, local books, footwear, artificial jewelry, balloons and household items. “A fair is like a festival and a holiday season for rural people,” said Gangabai, Jadhav’s wife. “Everyone prepares good food, dresses up and relatives from different villages attend the fair.”
With no option for selling goods, the Jadhavs were forced to work in 10 other occupations. They labored as farmworkers and masons, and in factories, but nothing helped them earn enough to survive. “There was no regular work because COVID devastated the rural economy,” she said.
The 2022 World Inequality Report states India is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Oxfam’s Inequality Kills report mentions, “The wealth of the 10 richest men has doubled, while the incomes of 99 percent of humanity are worse off, because of COVID-19.” Further, it found that a new billionaire was created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, millions like Jadhav could barely find 26 hours of work per month during the peak of the pandemic.
After two years, local administrators in the village of Jambhali in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district were permitted to arrange a fair that would be held January 1-2. Unfortunately, while the Jadhavs assumed it would help them sail, it was far from reality.
With rising coronavirus cases in January, reporting as high as 347,254 cases one day, several COVID restrictions were implemented again.
“We earned about 3,000 rupees ($40) from every fair before the pandemic. Now we are finding it difficult even to recover the transportation cost,” Balu Jadhav said. “Ever since COVID, people have stopped spending money because of dwindling wages.”
Hundreds of vendors in the Kolhapur district protested several times outside the local administrator’s office, demanding revocation of the ban on fairs. “Despite writing hundreds of letters, nothing concretized,” Jadhav said.
Anusuya Chavan, who lives in the same village as the Jadhav family, is in her mid-40s and sells toys. “This occupation forced us to never send the children to school, and with COVID, there’s no possibility that four of my children will ever see the school.” Her children, all below 18, are busy looking for work. “Earlier, we took loans to support our business, but now we are forced to take loans for eating food twice a day. It’s that bad.” Chavan has 13 members in her joint family and is in $670 debt. Her husband, Yuvraj, 50, has spent four decades traveling to sell at fairs. “My entire life has gone sleeping on roads,” he said. “But with lockdowns and curfews, we don’t even have roads on which to sleep.”
Vendors rely on informal loans to buy items to sell and pay them off immediately after fairs. “The moneylenders send their goons for collection, and we always pay on time,” Yuvraj said. However, with no sales, several vendors have been caught in debts of at least $3,350 each. High interest-rate fees have caused those debts to amass.
Meanwhile, fear, anger and frustration pile up, with another generation missing out on obtaining an education. That leaves Jadhav to vent.
“Even our children will have to live the same cursed life now.”
A view of the Jambhali fair at night. Vendors said they had never before seen such a low turnout / credit: Sanket JainVendors sell a variety of items, including toys, posters of regional deities, local books, footwear, artificial jewelry, balloons, household items, and much more in India’s rural fairs / credit: Sanket Jain“I’ve taken both the doses of the vaccine and even follow COVID norms, yet the government hasn’t given permission for fairs,” said toyseller Yuvraj Chavan / credit: Sanket JainKanthinath Ghotane traveled from the neighboring Indian state of Karnataka state to sell keychains in the Jambhali fair of Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district / credit: Sanket JainFairs are more like festivals, and are special occasions for rural people. During these fairs, every household creates in front of their homes rangolis, a traditional Indian art form, in which patterns are created on the floor using powder, flower petals, colors, colored sand and limestone / credit: Sanket JainEveryone (irrespective of religion) first offers coconut and incense sticks in Jambhali’s Khwajaso dargah, a Muslim shrine, before entering the jatra. “These fairs are a sign of communal harmony,” said Sikandar Attar, a coconut and incense stick vendor / credit: Sanket JainSikandar Attar, 69, who travels to more than 100 villages every year, sells incense sticks and coconuts offered to regional deities. He began working at farms during the COVID-19 lockdown. Even today, he hasn’t been able to find his way through to make ends meet / credit: Sanket JainCredit: Sanket JainColorful LED-based toys are selling at a higher rate than other items / credit: Sanket JainRiyaz Latkar, 32, has been selling artificial jewelry for over a decade and said he has never seen a crisis like this / credit: Sanket JainDuring these two- to three-day fairs, vendors sleep and cook on the roadside. Kamalaxmi Bahurupi said, “I’ve spent my entire life cooking food on roadsides. I don’t know how long we will live like this.” / credit: Sanket JainArtificial jewelry is usually in high demand in the village fairs of Maharashtra. However, with people losing their livelihoods because of the pandemic lockdown, vendors have reported a steep decline in sales / credit: Sanket JainIn this stall, every item is sold for a fixed rate of Rs 10 (13 U.S. cents) / credit: Sanket JainBalu and Gangabai Jadhav were forced to work 10 different occupations as the fairs remained banned. “If there’s another lockdown, we’ll all die of starvation,” Balu said / credit: Sanket JainAs much as 70 percent of rural India lacks an internet connection. With schools shut because of the coronavirus pandemic, several children have been forced to pick this line of work to make ends meet and support their families / credit: Sanket JainHorse and bullock cart races remain a major attraction during these fairs. Here, a horse is getting ready for a race / credit: Sanket JainCredit: Sanket Jain
Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.
The European bison, whose population previously suffered from hunting and habitat destruction across Europe, is now making a comeback / credit: Jens-Christian Svenning
Editor’s Note: This article previously specified the species of wolf, as well as the time frame, to which it was hunted to extinction. What experts say is a missed opportunity in a European Commission proposal has been clarified. Captions for the first and third photos have been corrected.
The Swedish government is planning to cull the country’s wolf population by half. The plan faces little to no resistance in the Swedish parliament, given a majority are in favor of the proposal. But conservationists, other experts and Green Party MPs have warned the move could be a breach of biodiversity laws in the European Union (EU), risking the country being dragged to court. The issue, though, is part of a much larger and graver problem.
Europe has lost most of its mega herbivores (those weighing more than 1,000 kilograms or 2,204 pounds), 75 percent of species weighing more than 100 kg (220 pounds) and a little over half of its terrestrial mammals weighing more than 10 kg (22 pounds), a new paper points out.
And, of the species that survive today, many have reduced ranges and numbers. Suffice to say, proposals to further cull wildlife populations can only accelerate the extinction crisis. But all is not lost. At least, not yet.
A truly natural European ecosystem would include lions, hyenas and moon bears, among other long lost species / credit: Elvira Martinez Camacho
How Large Mammals Can Make a ‘European Comeback’
The paper charts a path for re-wilding Europe with large mammals, or those weighing more than 10 kg (22 pounds), both for conserving biodiversity and restoring ecosystems. It lists species, state of extinction risks, and ways of restoration, such as natural recolonization and reintroduction.
And, all this, the paper argues, is a legal obligation for Europe in light of a host of EU and international laws, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that requires Europe to restore both the diversity and density of its megafauna. More specifically, Article 8(f) of CBD states every party that has signed onto the agreement “shall, as far as possible and as appropriate … rehabilitate and restore degraded ecosystems and promote the recovery of threatened species, inter alia, through the development and implementation of plans or other management strategies.”
Additionally, the paper states, Europe has a moral obligation to re-wild in solidarity with the Global South, which is currently doing the heavy lifting when it comes to biodiversity preservation.
“Legal obligations have definitely played a role in some real-life scenarios, such as the legal protection of wolves which has clearly aided the species’ European comeback,” Arie Trouwborst, lead author of the paper and associate professor at Tilburg Law School, told Toward Freedom.
However, in the context of general commitments to restore ecosystems, “large mammals, especially those which disappeared from Europe long ago, like elephants and lions, have largely been a blind spot—wrongly so, as our paper aims to show,” he added. No examples exist of European governments undertaking such a feat with the Global South in mind.
Re-wilded primitive cattle breeds are used to fill the niche of the aurochs, an extinct cattle species thought to be the wild ancestor of modern domesticated cows / credit: Elvira Martinez Camacho
‘Life Goes On After Wolves Come Back’
Large mammals play a critical role in ecosystem restoration or even in ecosystem functions in general. Elaborating on the same, Jens-Christian Svenning, co-author on the paper, listed out three key reasons why:
Large herbivores tend to promote heterogeneity in vegetation structure and composition as well as in soil conditions, while large carnivores contribute to this effect by modulating herbivore assemblage composition, densities and behavior, in complex ways;
megafauna constitute and generate microhabitats for numerous other species, dependent on their living bodies, their carcasses, and their dung; and lastly,
megafauna species are mobile and play important roles in plant and nutrient dispersal, which is crucial to maintaining local landscapes and in assisting the fight against climate change.
As for ill-thought out calls to cull wildlife, like the Swedish plan to reduce wolf populations by half, the paper says in recent decades, people in countries like Germany and France have “quickly discovered that life goes on after wolves come back.” The sentiment is also true for larger mammals that are generally considered more dangerous for human life, like brown bears, which have been successfully reintroduced in Italy’s Trento region.
The expansion of wolves in Europe is also a result of strong legal protections. Wolves were not reintroduced in Europe. Rather, they naturally began expanding into areas in which they existed before. And legal instruments like the Bern Convention and Habitats Directive assisted such expansion by ensuring countries that wolves had moved into protected them. Earlier, wolves were hunted to extinction in large parts of Europe.
The Habitats Directive has been crucial for the restoration of wolves in Europe. “It’s obvious when you compare wolf numbers in EU states that are bound by the Directive—like Sweden—to those in countries which are not, like Norway,” Trouwborst said. “Wolves have been trying to make a comeback in both countries, but they have not been successful in Norway.”
The Directive provides room for enforcing conservation action, both by the European Commission and via national courts.
Regarding even more challenging species reintroduction candidates, the paper says if people in India can co-exist with lions and elephants, and people in Tanzania and Zimbabwe can do so with hyenas and hippos, “then surely this is also possible in Europe.”
India’s population density stands at 464 people per square kilometer (or 0.38 of a square mile), as opposed to 34 people per square kilometer in Europe. And yet, the paper points out, people in India still share the landscape with elephants, rhinos, gaur (Indian bison), tigers, lions, leopards, snow leopards, caracals (a wild cat), brown bears, wolves and others.
Apart from CBD and EU biodiversity laws, another campaign demands decadal commitments and efforts. The United Nations has recognized the years between 2021 and 2030 as the “Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.” A guidebook on such restoration efforts points to re-wilding in Europe where “there is enough space and opportunity to introduce species that have been lost.”
But the question is “restore to what?” In other words, what is the reference point or model that could illustrate what the world needs to go back to?
“Large mammals play a key role in ecosystems and many of them disappeared due to human interference. So the big picture… the model must be the healthy ecosystems that occurred before humans wiped out many of the largest of species,” Trouwborst explained. Such models can be found today, which could be the basis for restoration in Europe. Some European ecosystems looked like versions of modern-day east and south Africa, as well as India, with elephants, hyenas, lions, rhinos and hippos.
“As Europeans we cannot keep expecting those in the Global South to continue conserving and even restoring healthy ecosystems abundant in megafauna and not take that seriously ourselves,” Trouwborst said. In addition to solidarity with the Global South, another moral argument is “you should restore what you destroyed,” he added.
The reference in Article 8(f) of CBD to “as far as possible and as appropriate,” is about equity, legal scholars point out. It is equivalent to the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (CBDR-RC) enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The principle refers to developed countries being held responsible for undertaking a majority of climate action because of their historical greenhouse gas emissions. That, plus their capacity—financial in particular—to shoulder such burdens.
Carina Bury, a PhD candidate in International Environmental Law at the University of Hamburg in Germany, explained that qualifiers such as “as far as possible” that are often encountered in international environmental law should be read in light of CBDR-RC. In practice, what this also means is if someone says elephants in Europe is not plausible, then, Trouwborst argued, “I’d say look at India. If it’s possible in India, then why not in Europe? It would take some small and some big sacrifices but it’s not impossible. It’s a question of priority.”
Other researchers also have pointed out the question of equity is absent when international environmental law has been implemented.
“I found that Germany omitted to implement the treaty in the manner required by the constitution. The consequence is that the treaty remains largely inapplicable, but it puts pressure on states of the global South—such as Montenegro—to implement the same treaty,” she said of her research that found Germany neglected to conserve its wetlands. Ramsar Convention is an international treaty signed in 1971 that regulates the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands.
This reporter reached out to the federal environment ministry in Germany for a response. The copy will be updated if and when a response is received.
Considering Germany is a country with significantly above-average levels of wealth and technical know-how, it is “possible, and indeed reasonable to expect that wetlands located in German territory be managed as green infrastructure,” Bury said. She also added that when countries with sufficient resources and technical knowledge start to neglect their international obligations, less-advantaged countries are less likely to comply.
New Hope with Europe’s New Nature Restoration Law?
On June 22, the European Commission put forth a proposal for a new “Nature Restoration Law” that aims to halt both biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems. The draft law aims to address a variety of ecosystems—including agricultural lands, marine habitats and urban areas—and it lays out targets to be met by 2030, 2040 and 2050.
But experts have pointed out a huge missed opportunity because the proposal does not highlight the importance of megafauna for ecosystem restoration. Plus, the proposal only focuses on those species that are included in the Habitats Directive, not those that had long ago disappeared from the European landscape. The European Commission is yet to respond to these critiques.
So while there are legal hooks in the proposal that could help restoration efforts for some large mammals,” the proposal ignores current scientific knowledge as to what healthy and well-functioning European ecosystems really looked like,” Trouwborst pointed out.
This story was developed as part of a journalism residency program at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL) in Heidelberg, Germany.
Rishika Pardikar is an Indian journalist who reports on climate change and biodiversity. She is currently a journalist-in-residence at MPIL in Heidelberg, Germany.
Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) worker Kavita Magdum monitors the health of infants and children. Here, she weighs one of twins of Hasina Hajukhan / credit: Sanket Jain
Hasina Hajukhan never imagined that returning to her maternal house would turn into a near-death experience. In April, the 28-year-old was seven months pregnant, and her medical parameters were normal. “I was taking extra care to ensure no complications during childbirth,” she told Toward Freedom.
As is customary in many parts of India, pregnant women return to their parents’ homes to give birth. When Hajukhan first reached her mother’s house in Ganeshwadi village of the western Indian state of Maharashtra, she felt nauseated. “It was April’s final week, and I couldn’t even breathe properly,” she recounted. A heat wave had taken hold. “The climate was the stark opposite of what it was in my husband’s village.” In Ganeshwadi, things kept getting complicated with the rising heat. “Every day, I was breathless and would feel dizzy.”
Using a desk fan at the highest speed didn’t help, as it just circulated more hot air. An air conditioning system was something her family could not afford. The tin sheet roof would get extremely hot. During this crucial time, Hajukhan needed rest. However, she spent most of her day stepping out to gasp for cold air. In May’s final week, things got worse. “I felt as if I was going to die,” she recalled, teary-eyed.
Immediately, her mother dialed Ranjana Gavade, an accredited social health activist (ASHA worker), part of a community of 1 million women healthcare workers appointed for every 1,000 people in India’s villages. ASHAs are responsible for more than 70 healthcare tasks, with a particular focus on maternal and child health.
ASHA worker Shubhangi Kamble spends a significant amount of time each day talking to community women to help them understand the impact of climate change on children / credit: Sanket Jain
“I was worried looking at her rapidly deteriorating health and informed my colleagues.” Upon their instructions, Gavade called a government ambulance and swiftly took her to the district hospital, 33 kilometers (20.5 miles) away. Hajukhan gave birth to underweight twins. Her troubles still hadn’t ended when she was discharged after three days. For a month since then, Hajukhan has been trying to ensure her twins gain weight, but all efforts have failed. As a result, they weren’t administered the necessary Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG vaccine used against tuberculosis), Hepatitis B, and Polio vaccines.
The Kolhapur district, where Hajukhan lives, has been reporting recurring floods, heat waves, incessant rainfall, and hailstorms triggered by climate change. She said everything would have been normal had she not returned to her parents’ home to give birth in the heat waves. “My children wouldn’t have had to live such a dangerous life,” she said.
Like in the village of Ganeshwadi, climate change impacts have been delaying children’s immunization schedules throughout India, making them vulnerable to diseases. Research has found that if a child belonged to a district highly vulnerable to climate change, the odds of stunting rose by 32 percent, low weight by 45 percent, anemia by 63 percent and acute malnutrition by 42 percent. An analysis by global nonprofit Save the Children found that, globally, 774 million children are living in poverty and at a high risk of climate-related disasters. Weather disasters ranging from floods to droughts prevent children from obtaining nourishment, causing low weight, and these disasters put a break on children receiving vaccinations on time. Their weakened immune systems, as a result of a lack of proper nourishment in crisis times, make them vulnerable to other diseases. Being sick can halt the necessary immunizations, and these delays have led to a rise in epidemics and diseases.
ASHA worker Shubhangi Kamble often works beyond her duty to ensure every child completes the universal immunization on time. Here, she speaks to a woman to help her understand how climate change can impact her son’s health / credit: Sanket Jain
How Floods Impact Universal Immunization
Snehal Kamble, 24, a resident of Maharashtra’s flood-prone Arjunwad village, remembers the year 2019 in meticulous detail. “A day before the floods, I was preparing to go to my parent’s house.” Five months pregnant, she was looking for iron folic acid tablets. “Instead, all of us went to a flood relief camp,” she recounted. From there, she moved to another relief camp within a few days, as the water rose further. “During this time, I was worried about my house and belongings,” she said. She fell sick and was away from home for 15 days. “Those were the most difficult days of my life,” she shared. Then in January 2020, she gave birth to a boy named Sangarsh, who has often fallen sick. “When I went to my maternal house, he just couldn’t bear the heat there,” she said. The dehydration and spells of fever he experienced affected his immunization schedule. “His Pentavalent vaccine was delayed by several months because of health ailments,” said ASHA worker Shubhangi Kamble (no relation to Snehal), who has been monitoring this child since birth.
Further, his Measles-Rubella vaccine and Vitamin A dose were also delayed, making him vulnerable to diseases. “Vaccines need to be administered on time,” said Sachin Kamble, a nursing officer at the district women’s hospital in Maharashtra’s Osmanabad district. “Otherwise, it affects a child’s immunity, making them more vulnerable to diseases.”
He pointed out how the lack of vaccinations led to 2,692 cases in 2022 in Maharashtra, which reported the highest measles count in India. That was an eight-fold increase from the previous year. During this time, India reported 12,773 cases. India’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS) said only 31.9 percent of children ages 24 months to 35 months had received a second dose of measles-containing vaccine in 2019-21.
Another healthcare worker, Kavita Magdum, from flood-affected Ganeshwadi village, said that children in her surveying area never fell ill so frequently. She started noticing such stark changes only in the past five years. Upon inspecting this, she found, “Stress caused by the changing climate is leading to this.” For instance, Magdum sees that many children aren’t drinking breast milk, which has impacted their medical parameters. These drastic changes reflect in Indian government statistics, as well. During 2015-16, 58.6 percent of children ages 6 months to 59 months (just under 5 years old) were anemic in India. By 2019-20, this number rose to 67.1 percent. In addition, 32 percent of children nationally remain underweight.
After a year-and-a-half, Snehal’s son started getting better, thanks to Shubhangi’s consistent visits, when she monitored every parameter and ensured the best possible treatment by working hours beyond her duty. “Once the vaccination schedule started falling in place, his health, too, began improving,” Shubhangi shared.
ASHA worker Ranjana Gavade frequently visits Hajukhan’s home to monitor the health of her children / credit: Sanket Jain
Untimely Administration of Vaccines
While climate change is making it difficult for these healthcare workers to complete universal immunization, another challenge is the untimely vaccine administration.
“There are many instances, where vaccines in several villages are just not available,” said Netradipa Patil, leader of more than 3,000 ASHA workers and co-founder of Deep-Maya Foundation, a non-profit that works for women and children. “During such times, it becomes extremely challenging for us healthcare workers to manage everyone.”
Patil has observed that the workload has increased tremendously for all the ASHA workers because of the delay in vaccination. This is because ASHA workers are responsible for immunization, and in case of any discrepancy or error, they are held accountable. Research published in 2016 concluded, “Lack of timely administration of key childhood vaccines, especially DPT3 (the three doses of the Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis vaccine) and MCV (measles-containing vaccine), remains a major challenge in India and likely contributes to the significant burden of vaccine-preventable disease-related morbidity and mortality in children.” Another paper published in 2019 inferred, “The proportion of children with delayed vaccination is high in India.”
In 2021, the World Health Organization found that 25 million children around the world under the age of 1 didn’t receive vaccines, a figure not seen since 2009. “Many children never get the Vitamin A doses on time. These doses are just not available when required,” Patil said, suggesting the Indian government should consult local healthcare workers to arrange vaccination. “We need to reach more and more people, and, currently, looking at the changing climate, we aren’t prepared to do this,” she shared. Patil made simple suggestions like identifying vulnerable children and their locality and monitoring them from the earlier stages, even before the disaster strikes. “Just by proper identification, we can save so many children,” she said.
A woman playing with her child in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district / credit: Sanket Jain
Rising Undernourishment
Fed up with feeding medications and tonics that didn’t seem to help increase his weight and prevent him from continually falling ill due to the changing weather conditions, Rashi Patil, 23, quit taking her son to the doctor every month after 18 months. “My son just wouldn’t eat anything,” Patil said.
Moreover, the changes in local climatic patterns affected her son’s health, and he often fell sick. Last year, he was hospitalized for a week as his platelets fell and a fever intensified. What followed next were recurring illnesses that delayed his immunization schedule. Because of the fever in March, he wasn’t administered the Pentavalent 1 vaccine (it protects from five life-threatening diseases: Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hepatitis B and Hib [Haemophilus Influenzae Type b]). Her son soon became weak and began recovering only after the vaccine’s administration. All this while, her son struggled with good eating habits. After several trials and errors, Rashi and her husband, Rajkumar, discovered the climate affected their son’s health and eating habits.
“Now, their son makes it a point to eat only outside the house, where he gets some cold air,” says Rashi. “Contrastingly, this was never the case with my elder daughter.”
Toward Freedom reached out to Ganeshwadi’s community health officer, Dr. Prajakta Gurav, regarding what steps her team was taking to deal with delayed immunization. Gurav hasn’t replied as of press time.
The impact of poor diets is more obvious at the national level. For instance, just 11.3 percent of children between the ages of 6 months and 23 months receive an adequate diet. Plus, in 2022, India ranked 107 out of 121 countries on the global hunger index. These numbers further reveal how climate change is exacerbating the existing faultlines.
The problem is not restricted to India. Of the countries at severe risk of being adversely affected by climate change, the report by Save the Children says, “Burundi has the highest rate of stunted children (54 percent), followed by Niger (47 percent), Yemen (46 percent), Papua New Guinea (43 percent), Mozambique (42 percent) and Madagascar (42 percent).”
Research published in PLOS Medicine found that in 22 sub-saharan African countries, drought led to lower chances of completion of BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin), Polio and DPT (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis) vaccines. “We took vaccines to the last mile. Now, climate change is eroding progress.”
For Komal Kamble, 30, vaccinating her 2-year-old daughter remains challenging. Her remote mountainous village of Kerle, in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district, remains inaccessible most of the year.
For the village population of less than 1,100 people, the nearest healthcare facility is 15 kilometers away. Last year, within a week of October rains, the road that connects her village to the nearest hospital was completely under floodwater.
Komal’s daughter couldn’t get proper medical care for two days, worsening her health. Her chest was full of cough, and the fever rose, making things difficult for the agrarian Kamble family. This wasn’t restricted to heavy rainfall, though. Since her birth in 2021, Komal has taken her daughter to a private doctor at least 20 times, spending over Rs 15,000 ($182). Last year, she was feverish and wasn’t given the crucial Japanese encephalitis vaccine, a Vitamin A dose and the Measles-Rubella vaccine. This made her vulnerable to more diseases, challenging the Kamble family.
Healthcare worker Shubhangi Kamble from Arjunwad says that instances of children missing their vaccination are rising rapidly. When she went to find out why this was happening in her village, Arjunwad, she saw that children fell sick during floods and heat waves. “This was the time that coincided with their vaccination schedule, and so many couldn’t get the vaccines,” she shared.
However, a delay in vaccination has caused more problems than she had anticipated.
“Almost every day, at least one parent dials me asking where they should get their children hospitalized,” she said.
Now, every rainfall brings a health issue for Komal’s daughter. “I am tired of going to the healthcare center to hear that my daughter is underweight or sick and can’t be given the vaccine,” Komal said, with frustration in her voice.
Meanwhile, with every climate disaster, it will become increasingly difficult for many families to complete the immunization in time. “I’ve been vaccinating children for over a decade, but things never got this difficult. We took vaccines to the last mile. Now, climate change is eroding progress,” said healthcare worker Kavita Magdum.
Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.
This article was produced by Peoples Dispatch/Globetrotter News Service.
As Afghanistan’s economy continues to spiral, as many as 34 million Afghans are living below the poverty line, says a new UN report. The “Afghanistan Socio-Economic Outlook 2023” report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on April 18 highlights the impact of cuts in international aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban took power.
The report notes that the number of people below the poverty line in Afghanistan has increased from 19 million in 2020 to 34 million today. It also adds, “Even if the UN aid appeal for international assistance to reach $4.6 billion in 2023 succeeds, it may fall short of what is needed to improve conditions for millions of Afghans.”
The UNDP report comes after the UN said that it was “reviewing its presence” in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s ban on Afghan women from working for the international organization earlier this month. The UN statement suggested that it may be planning to suspend its operations in the country.
The report also notes that Afghanistan is currently facing a severe fiscal crisis after the ending of foreign assistance “that previously accounted for almost 70 percent of the government budget.” A severe banking crisis also continues. In 2022, Afghanistan’s GDP contracted by 3.6 percent. The report adds that the average real per capita income has also declined by 28 percent from the 2020 level.
On May 1, the UN began holding crucial talks regarding Afghanistan in Doha. The participants include the five permanent UN Security Council members, countries in the region such as Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and key players such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Notably, the de facto Taliban government of Afghanistan was not invited to participate. “Any meeting about Afghanistan without the participation of the Afghan government is ineffective and counterproductive,” said Abdul Qahar Balkhi, Taliban foreign ministry spokesman.
