Getting the bulletin right

In the PBS documentary, Monsoon, the poet S P Kurada notes, “The wild monsoon winds blow with abandon, swaying everything in their path.

Capturing the monsoons

Drops for the economy

Contaminating millets

Millets, suddenly, are a focus area for the Union Ministry of Agriculture.

Bundled in a sacred basket

At a time when millions of tonnes of foodgrains are rotting across the country due to storage crisis, tribal farmers of Jharkhand are safely storing their grains in the traditional mora. Made of ropes of rice straw, mora is an airtight container that safeguards grains against pests and rotting. In states like Punjab and Haryana, rice straw is treated as waste and burnt after harvest.

Forgotten healers

‘Modern buildings cannot breathe’

Sapped for sal seed

The roads in the thickly forested Baigachak region of Madhya Pradesh’s Dindori district are these days covered with sal seeds. After a gap of three years, sal (Shorea robusta) trees have yielded seeds in abundance, promising good returns for the resident Baiga tribe, which collects the seeds for a living.

The Avon lady lifts our biodiversity

The loss of our breeds

In June last year, we visited Malaysia on the invitation of the country’s oldest and most active consumer action group, The Consumer Association of Penang, to study the livestock production systems and to advise on how these can be transformed into more sustainable and less industrial farming systems.

Flame that cools

For a poet, it is all colour and no fragrance, and for the common man, it is a mere flower. Palash, or the Flame of the Forest, which is abundantly available in central parts of the country, has long been considered virtually useless. Of course, the flower once came handy in making dyes for Holi but the profusion of chemical colours in the market put to an end to its use.