Melghat – Harsha Vadlamani https://sriharsha.in Photojournalist, Filmmaker in Delhi and Hyderabad, India Fri, 08 Aug 2025 11:14:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://sriharsha.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/favicon-200x200.png Melghat – Harsha Vadlamani https://sriharsha.in 32 32 See how rural India has been overrun by the pandemic’s second wave // National Geographic https://sriharsha.in/see-how-rural-india-has-been-overrun-by-the-pandemics-second-wave-national-geographic/ Mon, 21 Jun 2021 05:04:46 +0000 https://sriharsha.in/?p=27637 For the past few weeks, I have been travelling through remote parts of central India, documenting how the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic affected remote rural and Indigenous communities. The situation is dire—the public health infrastructure is inadequate, and several groups of volunteer doctors and medical staff have been stepping in to ensure that these communities receive care.

My work so far, documenting the incredible work of Jan Swasthta Sahyog and Sangwari in Chattisgarh and MAHAAN Trust in Melghat, Maharashtra, has appeared in the National Geographic alongside Sibi Arasu’s words. Please read the article here and view the entire body of work here.

Harsha Vadlamani Photojournalist, Documentary Photographer and Filmmaker in India
National Geographic, June 2021.

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]]> COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists Grant from the National Geographic Society https://sriharsha.in/covid-19-emergency-fund-for-journalists-grant-from-the-national-geographic-society/ Tue, 20 Apr 2021 11:05:06 +0000 https://sriharsha.in/?p=27689 Kalabai Maravi, a 50-year-old health worker trained by the Jan Swasthya Sahyog, during her door-to- door monitoring of villagers for COVID-19 symptoms in Bamhani inside the core zone of the Achanakmar Tiger Reserve in Mungeli, Chhattisgarh. May 11, 2021.
Kalabai Maravi, a 50-year-old health worker trained by the Jan Swasthya Sahyog, during her door-to- door monitoring of villagers for COVID-19 symptoms in Bamhani inside the core zone of the Achanakmar Tiger Reserve in Mungeli, Chhattisgarh. May 11, 2021.

Earlier this month, on the last day of my COVID-19 isolation, I applied for a grant from the National Geographic Society. I just received the news that the Society has awarded me a COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists grant.

While 69% of India lives in its villages, the number of public hospital beds available to them is just 2,65,275. Rural parts of India, which were largely spared by the first wave of the pandemic, were not so lucky during the second wave. Reports have been trickling in of COVID-affected adivasis from Chhattisgarh who were turned away by city hospitals to return and suffer in their own villages, of quacks running typhoid tests on patients with COVID symptoms, and more.

Over the next few months, join me as I travel through remote, rural and adivasi-populated parts of India like with negligible healthcare infrastructure to document the impact of COVID on rural India, and also the inspiring work of several idealist doctors working there.

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