India’s millennium city is choking
Gurugram of Haryana is often referred to as the millennium city of India. However, behind the shine and glitter lies an ailing population. Soaring levels of air pollution in the…
Salt pans save Mumbai from floods. So why are they under threat?
In the run-up to the Maharashtra legislative assembly elections on October 21, 2019, the state’s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, has announced several projects to woo voters. But one such announcement…
Future tense for ecologically sensitive Dahanu
As Indian government’s Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC) has appealed to the Supreme Court to dissolve the Dahanu Taluka Environment Protection Authority (DTEPA) stating that their work…
The invisible victims of an unfinished city
Nestled within the picturesque Western Ghats, the Lavasa township near Pune, Maharashtra is unlike any other hill city of India. As one drives up a smooth road amid the monsoon…
Politics in Maharashtra elections skirt around environmental issues
Between 2011 and 2014, Maharashtra's legislative assembly saw the rise of Devendra Fadnavis as he galvanised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against the then ruling Congress-Nationalist Congress Party combine and…
Aarey “forest” has fired-up Mumbai’s poll scene
In a relief for green crusaders in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, the Supreme Court, on October 7, ordered a status quo in the Aarey tree-felling case and directed the Bharatiya…
[Commentary] Five unconventional issues to be addressed while developing the new CBD strategic plan
The rush to develop elements for the new Strategic Plan for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and related global biodiversity targets have already started. A large number of stakeholders…
Ready to lose life but not land for the bullet train, say Maharashtra’s farmers and tribals
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…
Western Maharashtra floods: A man-made disaster?
Chandrabhaga Varote, a sculptor from Arey village in Karvir Taluka of Kolhapur district in Maharashtra, used to make idols of deities for a living, till the first week of August…
Mumbai’s fishers relieved after courts pause the coastal road project
Fifty-two-year-old Moreshwar Namdeo Koli is a fisherman whose family has been fishing in the Arabian sea off the Mumbai coast for the past three generations. His is among the 15,000…
