MDGs

This incident of September 2007 was one of the worst and most apparent cases of discrimination one could think of: Mrs. Dhanwanti Devi Meghwal is Pradhan, or leader, of a block in India’s Jodhpur district. She had been elected as representative at the block level for Scheduled Caste Women. At an inaugural ceremony of a cattle fair, she was about to raise the flag, when a member of the local assembly, Mr. Babu Singh Rathore suddenly stepped forward to stop her from raising the flag. More details on page 22 of this UN End Poverty 2015 Report (pdf).

His reasons? She belonged to the group known as Dalits—one of the lowest castes in India—and she was a woman. What happened was not merely a simple case of discrimination against women. It was, in fact, a classic example of the challenge that Dalit women in the Rajasthan state of India have faced since the caste system was put in place. It was a double whammy—class discrimination and gender discrimination.

Cell phones get a bad rap in most parts of America. Self-help gurus promise serenity if we turn off our Blackberries, planes ban their use, and public conversation is largely frowned upon in crowded places. This is a marked difference from most parts of the developing world. Why? In America, mobile devices have come to epitomize convenience but are underutilized for valuable information sharing. In the developing world mobiles are obviously still used for conversation and staying in touch, but they also provide an outlet for cheap and long-distance transfer of information that was previously impossible. However, despite their ubiquity, some people are still ignorant of their usefulness.