CATEGORIES

Of Funds And Fallacy

Poor implementation of the District Mineral Foundation has excluded some of the worst mining-affected people, whom it was supposed to benefit.

Will Africa Meet Its Sanitation Target?

More than 600 million Africans still lack access to safe sanitation. This will ultimately determine the well-being of the continent.

Lessons From Beijing

In just four years, Beijing has improved its air quality by setting time-bound targets and implementing a comprehensive regional action plan

Drive The Extra Mile

India is not only directly moving from BSIV to BSVI, it is also not allowing vehicle manufacturers extra time to sell the stock of unsold BSIV vehicles

Listen... Plants Too Speak

As early as in 1880, Charles Darwin demonstrated that plants could sense light, moisture, gravity, pressure and possessed several other qualities. Over the years, many scientists have proved that plants are sentient beings and move and respond to sensation. The subject is still controversial among the scientific community. Monica Gagliano is research associate professor of evolutionary ecology and former fellow of the Australian Research Council who has pioneered a brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics. In her latest book, Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants, she, for the first time, has experimentally demonstrated that plants emit their own ªvoicesº and detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. In these excerpts, Gagliano writes about how the pea plant responds to acoustic vibrations to locate water

Wild And Nutritious

Gaithi, a tuber variety that grows in the hills of Uttarakhand, has both nutritive and medicinal properties

The Right Pill

Africa will be setting up its first agency to check the spread of spurious drugs

Reign Over Rain

Rainfall deficit can be a challenge as well as an opportunity. Last year, Dhanbad faced a rainfall deficit of 60 per cent. EKLAVYA PRASAD narrates his personal experience of catching rainwater where it falls in his home, Uttarayan. By constructing rainwater harvesting structures, Uttarayan not only showed the way to address urban water scarcity, it also helped recharge groundwater with 1.06 million litres of rainwater

Try Some Salt, Fresh And Seasoned

Uttarakhand's age-old flavoured salts loaded with micronutrients are not only a healthy option, but can also tickle your taste buds

Corridor Catharsis

The proposed Similipal-Satkosia wildlife corridor in Odisha can be connecting link for the survival of endangered species. But mining activities need to be eliminated

Anthropocene In The Arctic

A behind the scenes account of how the scientific community came to terms with the changing landscape of the Arctic

Who Is Economically Secular?

The rich have the chance to get richer in an economic crisis, while the poor face the prospect of sinking deeper in poverty

Conflict Of Diet

It's not just fragmented corridors that take elephants to farms. They get drawn towards crops that improve their state of mind and well-being

Good Old Sap

Gums secreted by trees are a treasure trove of nutrition and have been used by communities in making seasonal delicacies

Whose Waste Is It?

Producers are shifting their plastic recovery responsibility to other companies

Commons No More

Odisha government is setting up land banks to lure industries and investments. In the rush, it is alienating people from the commons. ISHAN KUKRETI travels to some of the areas worst hit by the government-sponsored land grab.

Rise After The Fall​​​​​​​

Sikkim, once the world's largest producer of large cardamom, is trying to regain its lost glory. Can it achieve the feat in the face of a changing climate?

Save The Cow Mother

Oxytocin is given to women during and after childbirth to save their lives from blood loss. But the government is planning to restrict its use as it is illegally given to cattle to increase milk production.

Deluge Of The Century

Kerala's worst flood since 1924 reinforces how local environmental degradation and lack of disaster preparedness can make extreme weather events deadly.

Where India Fears To Tread

Even rich nations are using compulsory .licences to ensure cheaper life-saving drugs for public healthcare unlike India.

Bizarre, Serious, Jocular

Janaki Lenin captures the animal (and human) world in all its mystique and charm.

Drowning In Debris

Construction and demolition waste is piling up across India. Regulations are in place, but recycling is yet to gain momentum.AVIKAL SOMVANSHI breaks down the cartouche of waste mismanagement

Why We Need A Circular Economy

Reusing products is not only necessary for a sustainable future, but also makes business sense

Crisis Management

Jared Diamond's latest book espouses that nations can come out of a crisis just the way people do Ishan Kukreti

Curbing True Lies

The answer may not be to enact laws to ban fake news, as Singapore has recently done.

Scorcher

Heat waves have swept 23 Indian states and union territories claiming lives and throttling livelihoods. They are breaching boundaries across the world and are also becoming more intense. What can we do to cope with it?

Wild Delight

Sohphie, a sweet-and-sour fruit, marks the arrival of spring in Meghalaya. It is relished raw as well as in pickles Shalini Dhyani.

The Next Ten To Go Dry

Bengaluru, Beijing, Mexico City and Istanbul are some of the cities that are headed towards Day Zero.

Urban Deserts

An estimated 400 million people currently live in cities with perennial water shortage. The number is slated to go up to 1 billion by 2050 due to rising urban population and the impact of climate change.

Let Cauvery Be

Deforestation, urbanisation, illegal mining and dumping of effluents along the river has left the basin battered and bruised. Decades of degradation has led to an unprecedented crisis for the 15 million who live on its banks.Jitendra travels along the course of one of India’s biggest rivers to understand why its level hit a record low this year