Three decades ago, in 1992, the Constitution 73rd (on Panchayat Raj) and 74th Amendment Acts (on Nagarpalika or urban local bodies) were enacted. These were the first definitive steps to…
India faces a growing risk of one-two punches of extreme events (or compound extremes), such as chances of high heat and heavy rain occurring together or within a week, a…
Narayan Gaikwad, 74, never thought he would have to rethink farming — an occupation he has been practicing for over six decades. But, the rise in the price of chemical…
Minom Pertin, Monsoon Jyoti Gogoi, and Nawang Gyatso Bhutia, butterfly enthusiasts and researchers, were on a routine trek of the Mishmi Hills in Arunachal Pradesh when they came across a…
Thirty-one-year-old Nagarathna gingerly maneuvers a trolley-like contraption across the dairy shed with solar panel fixtures gleaming in the sun. The contraption – a solar-powered milking machine – saves Nagarathna, a…
In the village of Nongtraw in Meghalaya, one of the world's wettest region, honey is quite sought after by the Khasi indigenous community who go to the forest to collect…
New research reveals tea plantations can support biodiversity from native plants, wildlife and microorganisms when managed in an agro-ecological setting with sustainable, good practices. Scientists at Ashoka Trust for Research…
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…
The United Nations declared the decade of 2021-2030 as the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) recently released the first draft of a new framework…
Abha Toppo resides in Hatighisa village in Darjeeling district of North Bengal, around 20 kilometres from Siliguri city, the gateway to northeast India. Her village is a few metres away from…
Seeking to double India’s export earnings from fisheries, the Indian government plans to increase fish production from 137.58 lakh metric tons in 2018-19 to 220 lakh metric tons by 2024-25,…
It is the silver jubilee year of the Panchayat (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 that was passed by the Indian parliament to empower people living in the fifth…
Climate change in peninsular India may have pushed a pastoralist community, most likely the Todas, and their buffalo herds, to the highest elevations of the Nilgiris in the Western Ghats,…
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…
A pencil sketch shows an elephant trying to dismantle a thatched roof. Another depicts a pachyderm helping itself to succulent sugarcane stalks from a farm as people brandish fire torches…
Researchers have unpacked data from compensation records of human-wildlife conflicts in Kerala, to throw light on the hotspots of human-elephant conflicts in the south Indian state that has one of…
Last month, in an unfortunate incident, a female elephant died in Kerala – a state with a rich history of relationships between people and elephants, varying from mutual respect and…
On April 26, 2020, when the Dhemaji Boat Clinic was on its way to conduct a routine health camp in Pakhoriguri - one of the 2500 saporis or riverine islands…
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…
At nights, cities are often hotter than the suburbs or the countryside. They become ‘islands’ of higher temperature within a larger rural landscape, in a phenomenon called the urban heat…