Malise Ruthven -Excerpt-
With no serviceable toilets available for pilgrims, the ground beneath the pillars of the overhead metro railway that is now under construction (causing a huge disruption to Delhi’s burgeoning traffic) has become an open latrine, a magnet for flies and disease. Now the Aga Khan Foundation, in partnership with other NGOs and agencies, is rehabilitating the area in a major initiative with the municipal corporation of Delhi. Measures include the organized collection of refuse, the provision of public toilets managed by the community, where users are charged a small fee for cleaning and supervision, and the re-housing of squatters who had constructed precarious additions to the fourteenth-century baoli or stepwell—the water is reached by descending flights of steps—now being dredged and reconstituted using the latest radar technology.
The local government school in Nizamuddin has received a comprehensive make-over funded by the Aga Khan Foundation in collaboration with one of India’s oldest charities, the Sir Ratan Tata Trust.
via NYRblog – Delhi’s Poor: Revolution by Latrine? – The New York Review of Books.
Ismailimail 