Cities and Towns News

“It felt like apocalypse.” The year was 2016 and it was a day after Diwali, one of India’s biggest festivals. Mukuta Das, a young woman who lived in Gurgaon in…

In Karnataka’s drought-prone Kolar, men started moving out of agriculture about a decade ago, to find jobs off-the-field. The area, once considered the world's second deepest gold mine with two…

In August this year, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) filed a criminal case against the mayor, commissioner and four other officials of the Municipal Corporation of Ludhiana, a large…

Farmers, drivers and street food sellers in Guwahati are the occupations most vulnerable to climate change impacts in the northeastern city, while doctors are the least vulnerable, found a study…

In 2014, India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) – one of the world’s largest drives for sanitation – which aimed to make the country open defecation free by 2019.…

T. Balachandra, Conservator of Forests and Field Director, Project Tiger, Bandipur, is a worried man. Close on the heels of a massive protest in neighbouring Kerala, over the rumoured closure…

The FridaysforFuture campaign for school strikes led by Swedish climate activist 16-year-old Greta Thunberg and her peers highlights the importance of treating climate change as an urgent issue. The theme…

Mysore city (or Mysuru) in Karnataka sure knows its birds. A lesser-known secret of the city that wears a royal cape is its thriving birding scene. On any given day,…

As rapidly-expanding Guwahati, northeast India’s largest metropolis, gears up to clean its air under the National Clean Air Policy (NCAP), a study suggests a cocktail of natural and man-made pollutants…

The flight has been delayed by a few years but the runway is now ready for the work of Maharashtra’s Navi Mumbai airport to finally take off. Once it gathers…

In Palghar and Bhiwandi, two distinct urban districts close to the financial capital Mumbai in the western state of Maharastra, politicians have skipped the customary pre-election visits, in advance of…

On September 22, the World Rivers Day, Clean Coonoor, a local NGO, started the second phase of the Coonoor River clean-up drive. Coonoor is a small town of around 45,494…

Milagres Costa of Nuvem village stared in dismay at his paddy fields flooded with stagnant water from the monsoon rains in July, spelling doom for the crop. An under-construction highway…

For residents of India’s IT capital, Bengaluru, a neighbourhood park (NP) is not an uncommon sight. Their role in providing the urban population a recreational space has been appreciated by…

In the far past, afforestation was largely a means to generate income from timber and other products. Today, it is integral to our survival. Loss in green cover and increased…

Dirty air from the Indo-Gangetic plain and central India is messing with ozone levels in the Indian subcontinent, a study has found. The authors emphasise the need for pan-India co-ordination…

In India’s IT capital Bengaluru, sprinkled within its concrete jungle, are shady peepal trees adorned with serpent stones, bells and sacred threads, standing majestically atop gated raised platforms. Often a…

Amaravati was promised as a dream come true – a utopia. However, the city, which was being developed as the new capital of Andhra Pradesh, now stares at a bleak future…

The high noon sun makes it tough to inspect the shrubs and plants in the butterfly park without squinting. Despite the harsh conditions, the Athalye family - Sandeep, his wife,…

The months preceding the Lok Sabha election this year was a season of sops. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled several projects and announced more. But a sit-in protest of 200-odd farmers…