Almost four lakh (400,000) people depend on pastoralism as a mainstay of livelihood in Rajasthan. Despite being a much-touted, resilient mechanism for coping with uncertainties and unforeseen circumstances, mobile pastoralists…
India is targeting about 450 Gigawatt (GW) of installed renewable energy capacity by 2030 and, of that, a lion’s share – 280 GW (over 60 percent) – would come from…
Mining is known to cause loss of land, loss of jobs, and loss in biodiversity. But the impacts on women often go unnoticed. Women are part of a workforce that…
When Terde Yomcha brought Luba home, she was so tiny that she could fit in his hands. Luba is an Asiatic black bear cub—a species threatened by illegal wildlife trade…
When one thinks of the Thar desert, what comes to mind is a landscape full of sand. But there is more to Thar, the vast desert expanse located in the…
Morning walkers, residents of nearby residential complexes, vouch for the beauty and serenity of Jakkur Lake in Bengaluru and completely endorse and support the rejuvenation of the fairly large water…
“Long time ago, there was no lake in this place. This used to be a huge valley where yak herders used to graze their animals. One day, an old woman…
Every year, India, one of the biggest consumers of palm oil in the world, imports billions of rupees worth of this commodity. Over the past few years though, it has…
Living in Haryana, the hills of Himachal Pradesh were a distant dream for young Pradeep Sangwan. He attended a military school in Ajmer, Rajasthan where he lived a disciplined life…
In the Malnad region of Karnataka that covers the western and the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats, the king cobra is nothing short of a deity. Hooded cobras appear…
Seated on a carpet on the floor of the Buddhist monastery in Itanagar, Phuntsok Wangchuk cuts a lonely figure on this particular Friday morning. With a rather flimsy surgical mask…
One morning in April 2020, early in the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, I leaned over the terrace parapet of my home in Bengaluru, scanning the spreading branches of a…
Kendrapada district in Odisha hosts the famous Bhitarkanika National Park, home to a mangrove forest which is one among the two Ramsar sites from Odisha. The site, spread in an…
Vidhya Bhaskaran is back home in her village Salamanatham in Tamil Nadu from three days of training for the self-help group (SHG) members at Yercaud, a hill station in the…
The Kole wetland in Kerala is popular for its paddy cultivation that dates back to 300 years. The wetland gets its name from its high productivity - ‘Kole’ literally translates…
During his childhood, Malhar Indulkar was fascinated by rivers and he felt a strong connection with riverine ecosystems. He had seen people, including his parents, voice their concerns about the…
Phayre’s leaf monkey (Trachypithecus phayrei), an endangered goggle-eyed primate species once widely distributed across many forests in northeast India, is now confined to small fragmented patches in the states of…
On a sunny winter afternoon in January, Kusum Bai (name changed), a 40-year-old diamond mine labourer from Kalyanpur village of the Panna district of Madhya Pradesh, had just returned from…
Meerasa’s story is one of displacement. The son of a boat maker and a resident of Dhonirevu (Karimanal island), one of many villages around the Pulicat lake, Meerasa and his…
In stories, in art, poetry and more, villages along rivers find a frequent mention. But far from the romanticism associated with life nadiya kinare (along the riverside), is Jagdish’s life…