In Vadhavan village, located in the Dahanu taluka of Maharashtra, the inter-tidal zone stretches over five square kilometres, interspersed with rocks and small pools dense with green marine algae or…
A delightfully unapologetic, racy and often hairy coming-of-age story, Snakes, Drugs and Rock ‘N’ Roll: My Early Years is an engaging account of ‘Snakeman’ Romulus Whitaker’s life and his abiding…
For a decade, the uranium tailings pond near Tummalapalle and other villages in the YSR Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh have led to protests by local communities affected due to…
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has suspended the environmental clearance (EC) given to Jindal Steel Works’ or JSW Utkal’s (its subsidiary) project at the Paradip port in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district.…
For over a decade, the villages near the Kulda opencast mine in Odisha’s Hemgiri block in the Sundargarh district have been fighting coal pollution without respite. In a desperate bid…
If trees on our earth could mobilise, fighting for life would be the way forward, says Nicolas Salazar Sutil, the founder and director of Forest Guardians, an independent organisation that…
After over three decades of research, an Indian variety of coloured cotton may be commercially released by 2021. A decision will be taken once the last phase of the agronomy…
On the morning of September 5, 2019, as water submerged Khaparkheda village (Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh), government officials were trying to move people to makeshift tin sheds in the adjacent…
An aircraft poised to enter dark clouds – and spray chemicals to produce rain. Sounds magical -- that’s the image often associated with cloud seeding. In reality, it is much…
Two months ago, when the rest of the country was preparing for the Lok Sabha elections, 22-year-old Kanchan Kalyan Dongre’s life was about to take a turn for the worse.…
India’s seed market hides a sea of illegality, which keeps rearing its ugly head every once in a while. The discovery of genetically modified (GM) brinjal in a Haryana farmer’s…
Every few years, the recurring drought in Marathwada region of Maharashtra is attributed to poor rains. Stop-gap arrangements for tanker water, fodder camps or jobs under the Employment Guarantee Scheme…
The irony is unmistakable. In the Marathwada region of Maharashtra, which is in the grip of arguably the worst drought since 1972, what stands out is hectic road construction. En…
This is the second article in a two-part series on the role of environment in the upcoming elections in Telangana. Part One examines the scarcity of water in the state despite…
This is the first article in a two-part series on the role of environment in the upcoming elections in Telangana. Part Two highlights the pre-election situation in villages where the ongoing…
In a region where Bt cotton rules the roost, Kamal Kishore Dhiran, a farmer in Balodi, 50 km from Yavatmal (in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra) is an outlier. He has…
On August 10, when Sanjay Rathod walked to his lush cotton field in Lasina village in Yavatmal, Maharashtra, he noticed some closed yellow flowers. Opening them, he found to his…
Independent journalist and author of Riots and After in Mumbai, Reporting
Pakistan and co-author of A Frayed History - The Journey of Cotton in India.
Former Bureau chief, The Hindu, Mumbai.
