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When Kanupriya Harish took a team from Wells for India around Janadesar village in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur district, it was the routine monitoring visit of a donor agency that had supported a sanitation project in the area. Meeting over, a woman took Kanupriya aside and whispered, “It is because of you that our lives have changed.” That said, she melted away into the crowd. There was no way she could have been recognised – her face was covered, a norm for married women in the desolate landscape of...

The floods of Assam and Bihar have certain disconcerting elements in common. For one, they occur every year, without fail. They devastate the lives of millions of people. Every year we hear of the respective state governments taking steps to mitigate disasters. News items about the floods don’t make screaming headlines in the mainstream Indian media. But worse, the hearts of Indians don’t quite bleed anywhere else for the trauma people here are subjected to. This piece is neither a lecture in...