Political

Despite making sanitation a national priority with Swachh Bharat Mission, 50 percent of India defecated in the open till 2014. The goal to make India open defecation free by 2019 seemed ambitious. The government provided funding but it also sought active participation from the corporate sector.

India’s sanitation crisis involves huge cost. Transforming the country’s sanitation and waste management by 2019 is tall order.

Earthworms are considered best friends of farmers, acting as engineers in soils. They are helpful in the decomposition of waste, producing biofertilisers.

Nanotechnology deals with particles that are several thousand times smaller than the human hair, and it is being put to use in a variety of applications such as drug delivery and diagnostic tests. 

Alternative Futures: India Unshackled is a new book that dares to imagine what India could be.

Gopal Nishad, a fisherman in his early 40s, is frustrated that there is hardly any fish left in the Mahanadi’s basin at Pitaibandh due to the lack of water in the basin. This basin is located near Rajim-Nawapara in Chhattisgarh, the proposed site for the fourth anicut on the Mahanadi.

Environmentalists fear new CRZ rules will favour infrastructure over coastal ecosystems

Environment ministry issues draft Coastal Zone Regulation notification

Tenzing Lepcha, the lead activist of Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), is proud of his work in the last year. “All this was overgrown,” he says pointing at the orderly farm.

Lokesh Verma, a farmer from Nainital’s Chanfi village, says this is the third year in a row that he is bearing losses in agriculture. “I have lost around Rs 2 lakh and there’s a debt of Rs 70,000 to pay off. I grow strawberries, guavas and peas in my 15 bighas of land, but there is not enough water in the hills to irrigate crops properly,” he says.