The World from PRX

Rhitu ChaterjeeRC

Rhitu Chatterjee

Rhitu Chatterjee is a contributing correspondent with PRI’s The World. She lives in New Delhi and covers stories about the environment, health and development, and places where they intersect.She has covered the legacy of the world’s largest industrial disaster, the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 and how it spurred American communities into action. She has reported on efforts to restore the banks of one of India’s most polluted rivers, the Yamuna.In 2014, she received a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to investigate India’s free school lunch program, one of the largest anti-poverty programs in the world.In the past couple of years, Rhitu has added gender issues and gender violence to her beat. She goes beyond the breaking news about gender violence to document how men and women in India are grappling with shifting gender roles. Her story about an epidemic of a mysterious kind of chronic kidney disease in Sri Lanka and her story about how a 12 year-old girl in rural India is navigating changing gender roles were both finalists for the South Asian Journalism Association’s journalism awards.Rhitu also contributes to NPR shows like All Things Considered and its new development blog, Goats & Soda. Her work has also appeared in Science magazine, Environmental Science & Technology, and NPR’s Morning Edition.She did her undergraduate work in Darjeeling, India and she has an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Girls sit inside the Life Line Trust orphanage in Salem in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu on June 20, 2013.
Development
In India, access to toilets remains a huge problem — worst of all for women and girls
India's air pollution
Environment
She loved to run. In India, she couldn’t. It was unhealthy.
Rajendra Pachauri, then chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations European headquarters, 2012.
Justice
A former UN climate chief’s promotion has set off renewed fury over sexual harassment allegations in India
Sixth-graders at the Leão Machado school in Sao Paulo. School gardens have become a popular way to help kids learn to eat healthier in Brazil.
Education
How schools in Brazil are teaching kids to eat their vegetables
Joise Lopes, a farmer, says selling her produce directly to school meals programs has made a big difference in her income. “Oh god, this money is so good and it came at the right time,” she says.
Development
Brazil’s school lunch program is putting food on the table for the country’s small farmers
Demonstrators in New Delhi
Conflict
India lowers the age at which suspects can be tried as adults
Asha Devi and her husband Badrinath Singh in their apartment in New Delhi. Three years after her daughter's gang rape and murder, Asha says attitudes about rape victims are starting to change in India. “Earlier, families who experienced this would hide it
Justice
The pain of their daughter’s gang rape and murder turned them into activists
Relatives of Mohammad Akhlaq mourn after he was killed by a mob over rumors that he butchered a cow.
Belief
A lynch mob killed a man in India — after rumors he ate beef
chembur girls soccer
Development
What a generation can bring
walking_at_night
Culture
Indian college women push back against curfews
Sports
She could have been a child bride like her sisters. But she became a coach instead.
Lifestyle
#WhyLoiter reclaims public — and inner — space for Indian women
Garment shop in Mumbai
Justice
Mumbai slum dwellers say ‘I have to help’ stop violence against women
Varsha Deshpande
Justice
How come there are no girls? Pregnant women in India want to know.
"Deepali," who lives in Delhi with her parents, was twice committed to a mental institution against her will, even though her doctor said she didn't need that kind of treatment.
Health
One woman in India battles the label, and stigma, of mental illness
Many students attended a demonstration demanding laws that make India safer for women and children.
Justice
Two years after New Delhi’s brutal gang rape, many say not enough has changed
Women wearing "No Walmart" head bands at a protest outside Walmart India offices in Gurgaon, India.
Economics
India’s street vendors are hanging on, but malls and supermarkets are closing in
K. Subramania is one of Essmart’s first dealers in rural India. He bought a solar-powered light from Essmart, and since then he's sold at least 300 of them to his customers.
Development
A start-up in India treats the poor as discerning customers, not aid recipients
Prerna Junior High
Education
Many Indian girls are going to incredible lengths to get the education they deserve
Each neighborhood in Kolkata has its own celebration with a different artist creating the idol of Durga, showing her killing the demon.
Belief
Why do we celebrate goddesses, but treat our women so poorly?
Staff from the Indian Space Research Organization celebrate at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore after their Mars Orbiter spacecraft successfully entered Mars orbit on September 24, 2014.
Science
Women are the face of India’s Mars mission, but they’re still the exception
An artist applies the finishing touches on an idol of the Hindu goddess Durga in preparation for a yearly festival for Bengali Hindus.
Media
For Bengali Hindus, radio is an unchanging part of a religious tradition
Girls eating their lunch at a government school in Bawani Khera village, in south central Haryana.
Lifestyle & Belief
India’s free school lunches can fight — or reinforce — caste discrimination in India
At a government school in Paposa, Haryana, children devour kadhi and rice.
Lifestyle & Belief
India’s school lunch program not only fights hunger — it can breed tolerance
Schoolchildren in Haryana, India eat rice and kadhi, a curry made with onions, garlic, yogurt and fritters made with chick pea flour.
Lifestyle & Belief
India’s school lunch program may be imperfect, but it deserves credit for feeding millions
Cooks Beddo and Bimla, make rotis (a wheat flat bread) at a government school in a village  called Bawani Khera, in south central Haryana. The menu for the day is roti and a vegetable dish.
Lifestyle & Belief
Here’s why kids — and parents — in India love the country’s school lunch program
Delhi protests May 29 2014
Conflict & Justice
Why the vast majority of middle-class Indians didn’t protest after the latest gang rape and murder
Reporter Rhitu Chatterjee's mother went to the polls to cast her vote Monday in Kolkata.
Global Politics
The polls close in India, five weeks and half a billion voters later
A Janani Express ambulance. Janani means “mother” in Hindi, and the ambulance service transports pregnant women to health centers to give birth.
Health & Medicine
How a simple van in India can save a mother’s life
A Janani Express ambulance. Janani means “mother” in Hindi, and the ambulance service transports pregnant women to health centers to give birth.
Health & Medicine
How a simple van in India can save a mother’s life
Twenty six year-old Nidhi Misra voted for the first time. “I came out feeling very overwhelmed,” she says. “Overwhelmed with pride and with the realization that we are an effective democracy and the fact that we get to vote is a big deal. Because acros
Global Politics
Millions of Indians take to the polls in the biggest democratic election in the world
A demonstrator holds a placard as she attends a candlelight vigil to mark the first anniversary of Delhi gang rape, in New Delhi December 16, 2013.
Conflict & Justice
Indian politicians are changing their attitudes toward rape
Conflict & Justice
India plans to sell a handgun designed for women
Arvind Kejriwal
Global Politics
Vowing to fight corruption, this Delhi engineer may change politics in India forever
Pop singers Sona Mohapatra and Swanand Kirkire attending the rally
Conflict & Justice
A year after Delhi’s gang rape, it’s no longer OK to blame the victim
An elephant herd by Kabini River in Southern India.
Environment
In India, a reporter misses the elephants of her childhood
Lifestyle & Belief
Delhi’s LGBT Pride parade shows what a difference a decade can make in India
Development & Education
In India, sexual assault charges touch a magazine known for championing women’s rights
Global Politics
This ad from Google India brought me to tears
Lifestyle & Belief
Beyond Class Part V: Indians in America – Caste Adrift
Environment
They’re unhealthy and contribute to climate change, but traditional cookstoves prove hard to displace
Arts, Culture & Media
Tweets and Germs: Monitoring Infectious Diseases Online
Lifestyle & Belief
India’s Shifting Gender Roles: One Girl’s Tale
Business, Economics and Jobs
Kids Improve Lives in Kolkata Slums
Conflict & Justice
Young Men in India Grapple with Culture of Violence Against Women
Business, Economics and Jobs
Women Cab Drivers in New Delhi
Conflict & Justice
India Gang Rape Trial Begins
I Grew Up in India, Raised by an Agnostic Mother and an Atheist Father
Environment
Mexico City Birds Ward off Parasites with Cigarette Butts
Environment
Restoring Urban India’s Riverbanks
Environment
Cities and Rising Waters
Health & Medicine
Animal Infections That Spill Over Into Humans
Environment
The Beluga Whale That Mimicked Humans
Global Politics
De-Worming Program Set to Launch in India
Just Trying To Get By
Global Politics
Sri Lanka: Kidney Ailment Linked to Farm Chemicals
Environment
Curiosity Sends Self-Portrait from Mars
Environment
How Plantain Trees Could Become an Energy Source
Arts, Culture & Media
Why the South American Chinchorro People Made the First Mummies
A Flower Market Wrapped in Chaos and Monsoon Muddiness