Photos, Illustrations and other Images

Vultures are nature’s own cleanup crew. These scavengers are known to be immensely effective in managing animal waste by feeding on animal carcasses that, otherwise, have no other ways of disintegrating quickly.

The people of the Marathwada region have been facing severe water crisis for more than three decades. Despite adverse circumstances, the Akoladev panchayat in the Jalna district has set an example for other panchayats by solving their water woes through community participation and effective water harvesting measures that suit their geographic terrain.

Spanning over 1,165 sq km, the Chilika Lake is Asia’s largest saltwater lake. Over 200,000 fishers and 400,000 farmers depend on the lake for their livelihood. But what makes this lake stand out is its biodiversity.Over a million migratory birds winter here, making it a bird watcher’s paradise in India.

It was in the late 90s that Raigarh emerged as the hub for power, coal mining and sponge iron in Chhattisgarh. The coalfield in Mand Raigarh is spread over an area of more than 1,12,000 hectares with an estimated 21,117 metric tonnes of coal. 

In the last few decades, India has seen an increasing number of people migrating from rural areas to urban cities in search of work and better living. These migrants often get employed in the informal sector as construction workers, vendors, domestic servants, etc. They also live in informal settlements, generally known as slums.

Lingaraj Jena is a worried man. At 86, he is one of the older fishermen in Berhampura village, an island on the Chilika lake in Odisha. Though he no longer goes for fishing due to old age, he is worried about the opening of new sea mouths; he knows it is not good news for the fishing communities he is a part of that depend on the Chilika for their livelihood.

The Bhoj wetland is situated in the heart of Bhopal district in Madhya Pradesh. The wetland consists of two man-made lakes--the upper lake and the lower lake.

Long necked, rosy white birds with heavy pink bills stand etched across the horizon. These are the flamingos that fly miles from across Iran’s Caspian Sea and the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, to reach the inland waters of Point Calimere Wildlife and Bird Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu.

Women in Salmora area of Majuli, the world’s largest riverine island and India’s first island district, practise their traditional form of pottery--the one that does not use a wheel but is hand beaten to shape and uses a viscid kind of clay. As the Brahmaputra eats away huge swathes of land year after year, the clay that these potters use is being taken away by the river. 

Brahmaputra is the highest siltation-carrying river in the world, and controlling erosion is not easy. Because of its characteristics, it does not have a parallel with any other river in the world. Mythologically also, the Brahmaputra has always been a disturbed river, highly meandering, says Gunajeet Kashyap (ACS), Election Officer, Majuli.