© DW/Murali Krishnan

The capacity to bounce back and thrive in the face of adversity is not a natural talent or quality. Rather, it’s the result of a set of skills that can be learned. And no better has this been demonstrated in the impoverished state of Bihar in northern India. 

A woman, who underwent sterilization surgery at a government mass sterilisation “camp”, walks to sit in a hospital bed at a district hospital in Bilaspur, in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh, November 13, 2014. © Reuters/M. Mukherjee

Women in rural India continue to lack access to proper family planning services. This issue came under spotlight with the tragic death of 16 women who were sterilized in a health camp in the northeastern State of Chhattisgarh in November 2014. The doctor who had performed the surgeries confessed in an interview that he had a history of completing 200-300 surgeries a day. It was also reported that women were given no follow up care.