THE RIVER AS THE ONLY REFUGE In a country where most homes and even many offices have no air conditioning, the river becomes the only democratic relief from heat that has nowhere else to go. Such is the story behind France’s deadliest heatwave-driven drowning toll in recent memory. At least 45 deaths since June 18,…
The Bet Nobody in Indian Finance Wanted to Take In 2011, when Sumant Sinha left his position as Chief Financial Officer of the Aditya Birla Group’s renewable energy business to found his own company, the Indian renewable energy sector was not yet the story it would become. Installed solar capacity in India at that point…
There’s a type of courage you don’t always notice, but it takes real guts and a special kind of patience: the courage to challenge the system from inside. Think about the researcher who puts out findings nobody wants to hear, or the judge who gives an unpopular verdict. Then there’s the administrator who tells the…
Amitav Ghosh never set out to write a polemic with The Great Derangement. The book started life as the Berlin Family Lectures at the University of Chicago, and you can still feel that origin in its final form: it’s restless, essayistic, and willing to chase an argument wherever it leads. Ghosh roams across literary criticism,…
We ask AI for things dozens of times a day without ever once thinking about what it costs the planet to answer me. A recipe idea here, a draft email there, maybe a generated image for a birthday card, a quick summary of a paper we don’t have time to read. It’s so fast, so…
THE AIR IN THE ROOM Delhi’s air problem is not a mystery. It has been studied, modelled, mapped, and legislated over for two decades. The Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) IS a statutory body established in 2021 with powers overriding all state agencies. It exists precisely…
For decades, environmental protection and poverty reduction were often seen as opposing priorities, as though supporting one meant sacrificing the other. Forests were these fragile spaces, supposedly safe only if people stayed out, while raising rural incomes was some separate struggle. But recent research tells a different story. According to the International Forestry Resources and…
THE SOUND OF PROGRESS There is something deeply honest about wind energy. Unlike a coal plant, it needs no fuel. Unlike a dam, it does not submerge valleys. It simply spins quietly, relentlessly and converts movement into electricity. On June 15, 2026, the Global Wind Day Conference convened in Goa under the theme ‘Wind Energy:…
Vimla Bahuguna (1932- 2025), the veteran environmentalist, combined grounded constructive work with far-reaching sociopolitical activism. From her home in the Himalayas, she built up resistance to deforestation, big dams, destructive mining, commercial forestry, violence and abuse. During the 1970s,along with thousands of local women, she created the Chipko movement, which reverberated across the globe. Today,…
THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED Indore, June 13, 2026. Eleven nations. One room. One unanimous vote. The 16th BRICS Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting produced the Indore Declaration. It was a farmer-centric compact, adopted without dissent, binding nearly half the world’s agricultural land under a shared commitment to food security, climate resilience, and seed sovereignty. Under India’s…
