It’s 8 p.m. on a rainy day in mid-October and a family of 10 from Beed has arrived in the Nandhyal village of Kolhapur, a sugarcane growing district in south-western…
Exploring the geological history of Earth is fascinating work. That is what paleoclimatologists do. In order to understand climate change or to recognise it, we need to first understand what…
Erwin Fonseca, a 47-year-old farmer lives in Goa’s Assagao, a village near the coast in the northern district of the state. He owns approximately 1,600 square metres of land in…
On June 13, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the Haryana government regarding inaction over hazardous waste contaminating the groundwater near the Bandhwari landfill. The waste…
The landfill, often called Bandhwari, located in the ecologically sensitive Aravallis, is named after the village, whose land it came up on. This growing mountain of trash gets 2,000 tonnes…
A 2020 block-wise groundwater resources assessment by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) found that most of the districts in Punjab had over-exploited the groundwater levels. In some districts, the…
Water in India has always been perceived from a lens of public good rather than an economic commodity. A sense of ownership is missing among users as they abstract water…
Madhya Pradesh's Manpur town near Pithampur, a Special Economic Zone with almost 50 industrial units, is facing water contamination. The locals assert that the chemical debris from Pithampur is tossed…
Sonu Kalkal, a farmer living in Imlota village in Charkhi Dadri district of Haryana, used to cultivate his own land and harvest bumper crops. The 42-year-old has now turned landless.…
Satyanarayan Patel, a 60-year-old farmer, hails from Bijanwada village of Narmadapuram (Hoshangabad) district in Madhya Pradesh. His house is located on the banks of the Pasa river, a tributary of…
The government of India is planning an ambitious programme for the rejuvenation of 13 major Indian rivers through forestry interventions at a cost of nearly Rs. 19,300 crores (Rs. 193…
Beneath the vast, fertile northern plains of India, groundwater has been vanishing at a rampant rate. According to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the groundwater in north…
Tulsa Bai is a 60-year-old woman from the Dumerpani village in the Kanker district of Chhattisgarh. She uses a stick to move from one place to another. It's not just…
Around 20 years ago, Karmo Devi, a resident of Majra village in Himachal Pradesh’s largest industrial area, Nalagarh, dug a well for drinking water. For 20 consecutive years, she and…
Sukmani Nag, a resident of Dhodrepal’s Patelpara hamlet in the Bastar district of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, oozes confidence as she speaks about solar-powered irrigation, at a meeting…
Parmeshwari Devi is a farmer who owns agricultural land in the Khunti district of Jharkhand. A few years ago, she would often lament that she was not able to fully…
The Brahmagiri hills, in Maharashtra’s Nashik district, are considered the origin of the Godavari River, India’s second-longest river. The foothills of the Brahmagiri are now a popular spot for real…
The impact of climate change on India’s food systems has been long evident, with about 194 million people struggling for food and nutritional security today. Between 2017 and 2019, 18…
Harasa Bhoi, in her early 40s, is a vegetable seller in Odisha’s religious town of Puri. She owns a small shack on the Grand Road, locally called the ‘Bada Danda,’…
India is the world’s largest user of groundwater with over 80% of the rural and urban domestic water supplies met by available groundwater. But each year the water table keeps…
