How India’s 2026 Waste Rules are turning delivery apps into waste management giants. For the past few years, the convenience of 10-minute delivery has felt like magic. We tap a screen, and a brown paper bag or a plastic-wrapped bundle of groceries arrives at our door. But for companies like Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy Instamart,…
However, India’s dialogue on air pollution is far more developed than a decade ago. Air quality monitors display real-time PM2.5 figures on public websites. Cities release their respective plans on clean air action. People examine the pollution index before going out. However, amidst all this progress, there has been one particular aspect of the ongoing…
The Temple That Nobody Photographed There is a 9th century temple in a village in Odisha that receives no tourist buses, no CISF security detail, and no World Heritage plaque. Its sanctum holds a damaged but intact icon. Its walls carry inscriptions that have not been fully transcribed. Twice in the past decade, local residents…
The River That Remembers Nothing The Brahmaputra does not follow instructions. It shifts its course seasonally, erodes its banks annually, and has consumed Majuli by roughly 1/3rd of its original area over the past century. The communities on its banks have adapted as best they can, building on stilts, relocating seasonally, and accepting a negotiation…
She has been watching the river her entire life Annapurna Devi has lived on the ghats of Varanasi for sixty-three years. She has watched the river in every season and every decade. She watched it in the years when it ran dark with effluents from tanneries upstream. She watched it after Namami Gange was launched…
The Geese that flew eleven thousand kilometres to find this lake Every winter, bar-headed geese make one of the most extraordinary journeys in the animal kingdom. It is a non-stop, high-altitude crossing of the Himalayas from their breeding grounds in Central Asia to their wintering sites in the Indian subcontinent. They fly at altitudes that…
Here’s what the WRI analysis actually shows. The team reviewed 46 World Bank-financed health projects across low- and middle-income countries and came up with numbers that belong in every health ministry’s budget talks. For a country of 25 million people, putting money into seven areas of climate-health preparedness such as disease surveillance, climate-informed planning, resilient…
Online civic engagement in India is creating powerful momentum for urban change, from Bengaluru’s footpath activism to citizen-led climate initiatives. But lasting impact only happens when digital activism is backed by strong local institutions, accountability, and grassroots participation. The footpath mayor of Bengaluru Arun Pai did not set out to become a civic activist. He…
India’s corporate environmental responsibility debate is shifting from voluntary CSR to a constitutional duty under Articles 21 and 51A(g), backed by decades of Supreme Court rulings. The real challenge now is whether regulators and companies will move beyond symbolic green projects toward measurable environmental accountability. There’s a constitutional argument about corporate environmental responsibility in India…
The global plastics treaty is at risk of becoming a waste management agreement that ignores the root cause: rising plastic production. Without binding caps, pollution will continue to grow despite improved recycling efforts. What Was Promised and What Is Happening In March 2022, the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi agreed to negotiate a legally binding…
