The metaphor of the butterfly effect, for how tiny, almost imperceptible changes may lead to massive outcomes, is often used in the discussion of chaos theory: a butterfly flaps its…
When COVID-19 started spreading in 2020, humans across the world ran through 4.5 trillion doses of myriad pharmaceuticals. In 2021, India alone sold 3.5 billion pills of just one drug…
While the concentration of sulphur dioxide (SO2), an atmospheric pollutant with health and climate impacts, shows a decreasing trend in India in the recent decade (2010-2020), compared to previous decades,…
The history of Haryana’s 7,356 villages is as old as its ponds and wells. It is said that people settled wherever they found water storage capacity for human and cattle…
Medicinal plants in the Himalayas are under threat due to climate change, which calls for reviewing current conservation strategies, including protected parks in the mountain ranges, new research shows. The…
Plastics are the Anthropocene era’s ultimate convenience. The more mundane uses of plastics in our lives range from kitchenware, storage containers, and packaging materials to toys and small tools that…
Most of the sandy beaches and bays of Goa, India’s smallest state, are dominated by tourism and fishing. Yet in the low tide pools along the a 100 km long…
Human disturbance affects the disease dynamics of a place through its effect on the prevalence of host and parasite species in the geography, a study finds. The study published in…
Rabi Bagdi, a man in his mid-30s who has a family of five to run, moves out of his home at Kabilpur village in West Bengal for work at a…
City parks and residential gardens have a unique functional microbiome with more potential human and plant pathogens, and fewer plant-symbionts than neighbouring natural ecosystems, according to a study that unpacks…
It has been about 70 years since sandstone mining has been going on in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district and there seems to be no respite for the area as the expert…
Growing conversations on climate change in the context of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have sparked more meaningful conversations on dietary diversity, ethical consumption and planetary health in recent years…
In the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, I was working with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in its global headquarters at…
Sunita Shashi Gawade is a 46-year-old woman living in Dhatwada, a sub-ward of Pissurlem, a mining-affected village in North Goa district. She lives with her husband and two children. Gawade…
Since the past few weeks, avian influenza (bird flu) cases have been reported from several states of India. Several thousands of ducks and chickens have been culled to contain the…
“What is the alternative? Where is it? Four of my sons work in the stone mines even as they know they will contract silicosis. But what is the alternative to…
As the debate around the new farm laws rages on, the Indian government has gone ahead and cleared changes in the country's mining laws, to push mineral extraction and production.…
Launched in 2016 to boost the usage of clean cooking fuels and control the related disease burden, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) has claimed success with almost 98 percent…
Kusum, 14, and Pushpa, 12, (both names changed) ran away from their home in Singrauli, Madhya Pradesh in 2019, as their family didn’t have enough food to survive after losing…
The national government has unveiled a ‘single-window clearance system’ to speed up the operationalisation of coal mines and address the coal mining sector’s woes. But despite a plethora of complaints…
