Poverty

Beads of sweat run down Rajaa Tag's face, as she crouches in the dark mud room that serves as her bathroom in a small village in northern Sudan. Her young son is screaming wildly - he hates being washed. She holds the small, malnourished boy in one hand, resting him against her hip, and washes him with the other. "It's ok. It's ok," she insists to him gently.

At the new headquarters of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), some 10km north of Juba town, signs mark the finance, administration and operations directorates.

Laminated name plates with Southern Sudan's official colours line the desks in the new air-conditioned offices. Laptops and internet service are coming soon.

It is a new look, and a new way, for the former rebel movement that fought for liberation in the forests of Southern Sudan for two decades.

Forced by civil war to flee her village in Southern Sudan, Rebeka James Galwak found her way to the northern capital of Khartoum and lived there until the conflict formally ended.

With a peace agreement signed in Nairobi in January 2005, Galwak thought her Nuer village in Jonglei state would be safe enough for her to return. But within a year of returning, she said, fighters from the Murle community attacked her home.

I had been in Sudan one week when I set off up north to see just how widespread neglect in Sudan really is. One of the reasons behind the problems in Darfur, of course, is long-standing marginalization of the area. Darfurians are mostly black Africans and the government is dominated by Arabs.That is often portrayed as part of the reason for their neglect. Other ethic groups - Christians and animists in the south and the Beja in the east - have also complained of marginalization. But nobody ever hears about the Arabs in the north. I guess the assumption is that they are in good hands, since many government ministers come from the far north. I went to see just how true that assumption is.

In Kibera, a slum of Nairobi, Kenya, clean water is too scarce. But a new technology that takes just a plastic bottle and six hours in the sun is helping reduce sickness and diarrhea in the community, and in other developing countries around the world.

The water in our house has been turned off for days and my back is absolutely killing me. I've been squirming around on our dirty couches all evening, desperately seeking a position that doesn't hurt. My spine feels permanently compacted and I'm convinced in my self-pity that I can actually feel the vertebrae rubbing against each other.

For days, there has been talk of a million-man protest that was to take place today on the streets of Khartoum, in opposition to the International Criminal Court prosecutor's decision to pursue the Sudanese president for genocide and crimes against humanity. Police, journalists and UN had been awaiting the massive rally, which was to put all the other protests that have taken place almost daily to shame.

From what I've heard, 10 people showed up.

In an upper-class neighbourhood of the Sudanese capital, three men sit on a rooftop patio, talking politics between spoonfuls of ice cream and sips of espresso.

"I see the government as good - among the best governments we've had," one says.

Another pipes in: "This government solved the two biggest problems in Sudan - peace in the South and the discovery of oil." He goes on: "Of course, it has a lot of disadvantages: It still hasn't solved poverty, problems of education, job opportunities, unemployment ..."

When I decided to come to Sudan, I specifically chose not to focus on Darfur in my reporting because I felt it was already widely covered in the media (unlike other areas of Sudan). Everyone already knows about this, I told myself, let's look at something else. Even as a journalist, sometimes I focus too much on the logical reasoning (ie. "Is this really news? Haven't we already heard this before?") and forget that most basic instinct of wanting to hear and understand another human being's experience and suffering.

The express bus from Hyderabad to Dantewada takes fifteen hours on a good day. As the suburbs of the software hub are left behind, and then the wrought-iron gates of Ramoji Film City, the smooth pavement falls apart. But the sweep of paddy fields and palms—a facsimile of the INCREDIBLE INDIA! billboard hanging at the Delhi airport when I first arrived—grew more hypnotic with each mile, making up for the rough going. Hills loomed in the hazy distance. Cowherds shunted their stock out of harm's way, and women carried grain in clay pots on their heads.

The move by the International Criminal Court to have Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir arrested for crimes of genocide and war crimes in Darfur has been all the rage in the past few days, both in the International press and here in Sudan. Endless opinion pieces in Sudanese newspapers have denounced the move. Daily, people who support the president have protested outside embassies who support the ICC, calling the decision "racist" and "unfair".

By Arun Venugopal

Jason Motlagh, a roving journalist who covers South Asia, has written an extensive piece for the Virginia Quarterly Review on insurgencies that persist across India, despite the country's record economic growth. Motlagh's 9,562 word piece (you read that right) involved months of reporting, and took him to remote areas of Assam, Chhatisgarh, Orissa and Kashmir. His work — including the photographs he took — was funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.