In 1991, the year when India launched its economic reforms, I travelled to the Narmada valley. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) – the anti-Sardar Sarovar dam movement – had organised…
The state of Gujarat is an ecological marvel that houses extremely rare, endemic wildlife like the lions, hyenas, wolves, wild ass and birds like the great Indian bustard and the…
Parulben Pawar has to walk through the forest of Dharampur, in Gujarat, to reach her bee boxes. A path of four kilometers crossing a forest of teak (Tectona grandis), tamarind…
In Guneri, Kutch, there is a belief that many years ago, when the Indian subcontinent was not as fragmented, a Sufi saint had come to the region and planted two…
India’s lion census, supposed to be conducted in the first week of May, has been deferred because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is little doubt that the number of…
Conservation biologists are coming to terms with a new normal in the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic with disrupted food supply for animals, postponed fieldwork and training, and the possibility…
Expressing disapproval against industrial projects operating without environment clearances, a Supreme Court order states that allowing such a practice would be detrimental to the environment. While the order was in…
Farida Sheikh remembers her house in the slums in Ahmedabad feeling like a furnace, where summer temperatures have reached up to 50 degrees Celsius. But for the last four years,…
“Still waiting for new beginning”. The words in bold, white, are painted alongside a mural of a lion and lioness, on a sign near the forest guest house in Palpur…
The western state of Gujarat has launched the world’s first trading programme for particulate air pollution. The pilot, launched on World Environment Day in June this year, replicates a market-based…
Once upon a time, in the semi-arid plains of Kutch, grew plants that bore soft white tufts of indigenous, Wagad cotton. The cotton’s softness was in contrast to its hardy…
Nature does not discriminate. In the drought-hit Kutch, all living beings — man, animal, plants — are struggling to cope with its merciless onslaught. A large population of this semi-arid…
For fisherfolk from Gujarat, finding a whale shark tangled in their nets is an unwelcome sight. They can’t legally harvest the protected species, yet the world’s biggest fish can wreak…
“Like fish trapped in a net,” Jam Ismael Ali smiled at the irony of the simile drawn to explain his own situation. One among the few remaining Pagadia fishermen in…
Caught between the two mainstream parties, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress, the farmers of Saurashtra are an angry lot this election season. They are waiting for…
In the second week of February 2019, the presence of a tiger was confirmed in the Mahisagar area of Gujarat but the happiness was short lived as the big cat…
An offshore wind energy project, if found causing environmental damage to marine ecology, could be cancelled, as proposed in the draft offshore wind energy lease rules, 2019 by the Indian…
Land acquisition for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream project, the bullet train, is far from over, but just ahead of India’s parliamentary elections the project has now received the Coastal Regulation…
Until three years ago, farmers in Dhundi, a village in Gujarat’s Kheda district south-east of the state’s capital city Gandhinagar, knew only one way of mechanical irrigation in their farms…
In the land of contrasts that Kutch is, winter is the lean feeding season for its unique breed of Kharai camels. These camels, unlike the kind most of us are…
