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Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
The Twin Humanitarian Crises That You Haven't Heard Much About
No matter how we couch it or justify it, the lack of world focus on this humanitarian crisis is shocking.
In the strange, dichotomous world that we live in, nearly the same number of people are affected by undernourishment and obesity. Of course, the levels of both undernourishment and obesity vary greatly depending on specific regions.
On the one side is what the United Nations calls "the worst humanitarian crisis since 1945" — nearly 20 million people in four countries are expected to suffer famine and starvation. Death stalks 17 million people in Yemen who have next to nothing to eat. An unprecedented cholera epidemic in the country has already infected more than 200,000. Like this Washington Post columnist says, not many seem to have heard of this — as the world lurches along in its distracted way, people are dying on the wayside. There was a time when the Western world could be galvanized by stories of famine, but commanding attention in this age of instant gratification is a different story altogether.
On the other side, nearly 11% of the world's population is now classified as being obese. Obesity levels are projected to increase rapidly in the coming years and of particular concern is childhood obesity that puts children at great risk of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, not to mention possible mental trauma and social isolation. More worrying is the fact that since the obesity epidemic began, there has been no reversal — obesity rates have only either doubled or tripled.
This article, with its focus on numbers and graphs, provides a stark perspective about the extent and range of these twin crises. Sometimes statistics are necessary to poke us out of our collective lassitude. It also poses twin questions that the world is struggling to answer:
“What to do when millions of people not able to grow or buy sufficient food become chronically undernourished? What to do when millions of people put on so much weight that they become obese?”
