Dussehra

Over the last week it has been the Hindu festival of Dussehra, which is one of Orissa's main holidays. Everyone at Ekta had a few days off work, and many people either visited their family or had their extended family come and stay with them.

In part, the holiday is to celebrate the victory of the goddess Durga over Mahishasur. Durga is a powerful goddess, and is depicted with ten arms, often riding a lion or a tiger and carrying swords and other weapons. She is said to represent two forms of female energy - one mild and protective and the other fierce and destructive.

During dussehra offerings are made to effigies of Durga. This large statue was erected near to the Bus Stand in Koraput, which is effectively the town centre. On the final day of Dussehra, a procession known as Bhasani Jatra takes place. Durga is loaded on to the back of a van and paraded around the town. People dance around the vehicle, which moves slowly and plays loud music. Eventually, the image of Durga will be taken to a river or lake and immersed in water.

Towns like Koraput do not just have one image of Durga, however, so on the occasion of Bhasani Jatra the roads were clogged with vans taking different statues of Durga to find water. Being cast into the water is supposed to be symbolic of Durga travelling to the Himalayas to be re-united with Shiva. However, in recent years people have become increasingly concerned about the impact the effigies, which are often made with cement and plastic and decorated with toxic paints, have on local water sources.

Water

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Today is Blog Action Day 2010 and this year the world is writing about 'Water'.

One of the biggest differences I've had to get used to while living in Koraput is not having running water in my house. I have a large barrel which I refill every few days using a hose pipe attached to a communal standpipe which only works at certain times during the week. It's inconvenient, of course, and naturally I have to boil the water if I want to drink it (which leads to me drinking an inordinate amount of coffee).

My situation isn't that unusual though, and my inconvenience is nothing compared to what many people here in Orissa deal with, particularly those living outside the main towns. There are over 50,000 villages in Orissa but only 1,881 have access to tap water. This leaves 36,791 villages where they must haul water from wells, and 24,563 villages where they rely on large communal water tanks. Both wells and tanks are notorious for harbouring water-borne diseases such as cholera, dysentery and typhoid. The likelihood of these diseases spreading increases rapidly when combined with a lack of adequate facilities for sanitation.

I wrote about the need for better sanitation in the slums of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the same is true in many parts of India.

However, India is at least blessed with a remarkable organisation called Sulabh International, who work to spread the use of sanitary toilet facilities. Their public toilets can be found all over the country and they have also developed low cost toilets which are easy to construct and can be tailored for slums or rural areas.

The toilet pictured below is designed to keep waste away from the village water supply. They have calculated that it costs on average 1,700 Rs. (£24) to dig and fortify the substructure and 950 Rs. (£13.50) to build the superstructure. That's surely worth spending a penny on?

Indie in India

My article about the indie music scene in New Delhi has been published by The Guardian.

Back to School

My article about Ekta's work to get rural children back to school has been published by UNICEF.