Author: Dan Morrison

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Bangladesh: Feral Cats and Social Indicators

This post first appeared at National Geographic, and references “Feral Cats and Social Indicators”, my latest piece at The New York Times’ Latitude blog

The photo you see above is of an adorable stray cat that’s living like a squatter at Bangladesh’s biggest children’s hospital.

The kitty could be called adorable, if a little standoffish. It’s also something of a scourge: Cats shouldn’t be allowed to roam the open halls and wards of a hospital, certainly not one treating vulnerable newborns.

My most recent piece for the New York Times’ Latitude blog looks at a terrible attack that one such stray made on a six-day-old infant, and how such incidents deflect attention from the strong gains Bangladesh is making in terms of health and development. Continue reading “Bangladesh: Feral Cats and Social Indicators”

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When You Have to Drink the Water

A version of this post first appeared at National Geographic, and references my piece, Grunge on the Ganges, at The New York Times’ Latitude blog.

Varanasi, India — A couple years ago, one of India’s leading industrial houses announced a revolutionary new household filter that would for the first time bring affordable, safe drinking water to millions of homes. The Tata Swach combines the inexpensive carbon of burnt rice husks with silver nano-particles to kill and remove deadly microbes including cholera, E coli, and the rotavirus.

The Swach doesn’t need electricity or running water. Unlike some filters sold in the United States, the Swatch’s filter bulb cuts off the flow of water when it’s exhausted, meaning it’s impossible to drink unclean water that’s passed through a spent filter. (There’s no risk in drinking unfiltered water in New York or Denver, but it’s a different story in India, where waterborne diseases kill as many as half a million children each year.)

And it’s hugely affordable: The unit costs less than $20 and monthly filter replacements are just $7.

More than a million of these filters have been sold since 2009, and it’s not hard to imagine the public health benefits that will follow. More Indian companies are jumping into the low-cost filter business, which could push prices even lower.

This Indian success story, however, can also be seen as a thin bit of cover for the country’s scandalously poor public services. Continue reading “When You Have to Drink the Water”

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Saving the Ganges: A tale of religion, money, and (maybe) murder.

Satellite images of the effects of quarrying on the Ganges near Haridwar between 2003 and 2010. Image courtesy Matri Sadan ashram.

This post first appeared at National Geographic News Watch, and references “A Sacred River Under Assault,” which ran on the New York Times/International Herald Tribune’s Latitude blog on December 8. My first contribution to the NYT/IHT Opinion section, “A Dam’s Unexpected Winners,” appeared November 25.

An 11-day hunger strike by the swami of a small ashram ended on Monday night when the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand banned stone and sand mining from the Ganges riverbed near the city of Haridwar pending an environmental impact statement.

Officials slid the written order under the bolted door of a room of the Matri Sadan ashram, where 65-year-old Swami Shivanand had barricaded himself to prevent his arrest on charges of attempted suicide.

Shivanand read the order, unlocked the door, and broke his fast with glasses of lemon water and apple juice. This fast was Shivanand’s sixth. The longest, in 2000, was 21 days. Continue reading “Saving the Ganges: A tale of religion, money, and (maybe) murder.”

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Where Three Rivers Meet

Three sacred rivers meet at Allahabad: The Ganges, born of clear Himalayan tributaries that first trickle and then rage down from India’s border with Tibet; its sister, the Yamuna, which shadows the Ganges to the west before curving past Delhi and the Taj Mahal to join her; and the mythical Saraswati, ancient and invisible, which is said to run beneath the earth.

Only the Saraswati reaches Allahabad in a pristine state.

My latest, at National Geographic.

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Amazon Subprime

In the back of your mind you always knew this is where those great Amazon discounts came from: Desperate workers, including pregnant women, passing out in stifling 110-degree warehouses, some of them required to sort or pack a different item every 30 seconds over a 10-hour shift.

The Allentown Morning call, a small newspaper in the Tribune chain that has been pummeled at least as bad as its better-known sisters, has a depressing and revealing look at life inside an Amazon warehouse in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. It will make you pause next time your mouse hovers above Amazon’s “Buy Now” button. Continue reading “Amazon Subprime”

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The Nile: Five Forgotten Cinematic Jewels

Forget Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot unraveling the deadly mendacities of a steamer full of wealthy foreign tourists. Divorce your gaze from the spray-tanned Elizabeth Taylor and her cast of genuflecting thousands. For a cinematic glimpse of what life was like along the Nile in the glorious old and not-so-old days, check out these overlooked classics of exploration, identity, betrayal, and fear on the world’s longest river. (A video slideshow at the Huffington Post.)

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September 11: A Conspiracy Colonel in Darfur

It was mid-February, 2006, and western Darfur was hot as fire. The colonel was an American. He’d been seconded to the region’s doomed African Union peacekeeping mission, one of dozens of Western military personnel – Canadians, Germans, French airmen in smart blue jumpsuits, even a lone Cuban (compared with Sudan, Cuba is definitely the West) – serving as advisors to the underpaid and underequipped African Union force.

I can’t recall where the colonel was from. He and his family were based in Italy and they hated it. “It’s the language,” he said. “And it’s the food. My kids don’t like the food. Neither does my wife. Or me, for that matter. It’s a lot of McDonald’s, that’s how we’re getting by.”

Continue reading “September 11: A Conspiracy Colonel in Darfur”

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Bangladesh’s P.T. Barnum & His Knock Off Taj

A fake Dior bag, even one you know is fake, can still provide a little pleasure. Why? It looks nice. And it holds within it the comfort of the familiar and the aspired-to.

This first occurred to me last year, thousands of miles from Dior’s Paris and New York’s Chinatown, when I laid eyes on Bangladesh’s fake Taj Mahal.

The fake Taj is a tribute to a tribute. A souvenir snow globe for a country that has never seen snow. Continue reading “Bangladesh’s P.T. Barnum & His Knock Off Taj”