Sasmita Lenka’s journey in environment enforcement – cracking down on pangolin trafficking, clearing illegal aquaculture and mitigating human-elephant conflicts – started out with a burning desire to prove herself on…
With busy doctors as parents, annual visits to wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the Western Ghats punctuated Vanjulavalli Sridhar's childhood, sparking and nurturing her love for forests and wildlife.…
“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…
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…
From being a humble farmer to a confident leader, Ganga Rajput has come a long way. The 30-year-old is a resident of Chaudhary Khera, a village which lies in Madhya…
For E. V. Soniya, a scientist with the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, science, and especially molecular biology, has been a lifelong passion. Her expertise in the basic…
When she was a young girl, Sarojini Goyal of the Korba district of Chhattisgarh would often accompany her parents to the nearby forest to collect shoots, leaves, flowers, and fruits…
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 2019, budding ethnobotanist Momang Taram and her friend Ojar Taku were scouting the Siang river valley in Arunachal Pradesh for flowering plants belonging to a specific family. “Then suddenly…
When it comes to taking crucial decisions, J. Innocent Divya, an administrative officer of the mountainous Nilgiris district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, goes by the mantra…
Household air pollution caused mainly by the burning of solid fuels, including biomass—firewood, charcoal, coal, dung, and agricultural waste—and ambient air pollution are among the leading risk factors contributing to…
In Hinta, a village in the west Indian state of Rajasthan, Manju Soni, troops through lush wheat fields and adjoining homesteads adorned with animal motifs, stopping at wells where she…
One of the crucial guidelines issued by the World Health Organisation, to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), is obligatory hand hygiene - to wash hands with…
Kaliamma Nanjan, 70, sings as she cuts through her farm in Kerala's Western Ghats. She deftly navigates the slopes of Attappady in Palakkad district with the gravity-defying dexterity of a…
In India’s Himachal Pradesh, in the western Himalayas, Anuradha is doubled down into the soils of her farmland in Sudher village, donning a dhattu—the term used in the hills to…
As the sun moved above the horizon dividing the sky and sea, five boats approached the coast at Sana Nolia Nuagaon, a fishing village in Ganjam district of eastern Indian…
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,…
For believers of Vastu Shastra and Feng Shui, the kachua (turtles or tortoises) attracts good fortune. Decorative items, rings and pendants depicting these creatures are common talismans and some homes…
Pinky Alawa and Sapna Rawat cautiously approach a woman drawing water from a hand-pump in the hilly part of central India, in Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh. The pump is…
For half a century, Tulasi Gowda’s life revolved around the saplings that she nurtured with much care and love at the Agasur nursery of the forest department as part of…
