by deb | Jul 31, 2021 | Uncategorized
By: Anya Motwani and contributions by Simone Hein We have all been overcome by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, though it is the most vulnerable that have been the most devastated. Those at Apne Aap and adjacent NGOs recognized this suffering and, in likely...
by Ruchira Gupta | Jun 30, 2021 | Uncategorized
About 40,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees had fled to India a few years ago from their native land in Myanmar (earlier called Burma) due to what the UN has termed ‘a textbook case of ethnic cleansing.’ Around 900 of them live in Delhi, trying to make a living as daily...
by athira | May 18, 2021 | Uncategorized
-By Ruchira Gupta Kerala’s Covid-19 infection death toll is one third of the all-India average. How has Kerala, a small state in the south, been able to do this? The answer lies in the existence of a people-oriented health system and the feminine and scientific...
by athira | May 16, 2021 | Uncategorized
-By Ruchira Gupta As the second wave of COVID-19 takes over India, more than 20 million have been infected and at least 220,0000 have lost their lives. My NGO Apne Aap’s volunteers scramble to get oxygen to the most marginalised women and children in red-light areas...
by athira | May 15, 2021 | Uncategorized
-By Ruchira Gupta Sobbing video clips, desperate messages and panic calls from red-light areas, Rohingya refugee camps, caste ghettoes of street performers, are the daily wake up feeds on my inbox these days. Food, oxygen, a bed in a hospital, money for burial, and...
by athira | May 14, 2021 | Uncategorized
-By Ruchira Gupta Forbesganj is a small agricultural town in the foothills of the Himalayas. It is also my home where my family has lived for three generations, manufacturing and trading in rice. It is in one of the poorest districts of the country, Araria in the...
by Ruchira Gupta | May 6, 2021 | Uncategorized
-By Ruchira Gupta As I drove back through the empty streets, thinking of the 2,0000 women in line waiting for food, in the capital of India, I pondered on the injustice of it all. Did this have to be? Was the only way to avoid Covid-19 to stop street...
by Ruchira Gupta | May 5, 2021 | Uncategorized
-By Ruchira Gupta Within days of the first SOS message from a little girl in a red- light area, asking for food, my phone was flooded with similar messages of hunger and desperation. Women and children from the red-light areas, refugee camps, and migrant slums...
by Ruchira Gupta | May 5, 2021 | Uncategorized
-By Ruchira Gupta What do you do when a little girl tells you that she is starving? Simple. You do anything you can to make sure it won’t happen again. Or at least that’s what I did – one year ago, towards the end of March 2020, when a deadly pandemic had...
by deb | May 12, 2020 | Uncategorized
Twelve-year-old Anisha(name changed) called Apne Aap a few days after the announced Junta Curfew on 23rd March 2020. The soft voice of the little girl on the other side of the phone was full of distress and panic. She somehow managed to inform that her family had not...
