Do we really understand evolution?
Two events separated by one hundred years mark scientific revolutions that symbolise, more than anything else, the web of life. The first event …
150 years of humanitarian action: peace in war
In 1863 Swiss entrepreneur Jean Henry Dunant mobilised statesmen, doctors and philanthropists to form the International Committee of the Red …
What happened to the Mayas?
With its awe-inspiring architecture and remarkable concepts of astronomy, the Maya was undoubtedly one of the greatest civilisations of …
India smiling, are you smiling too?
India is smiling. The question is: are you in, or are you out? Have you signed up? India is smiling. For good reason. Never has living here been …
DIRTY SEX
Every 10 years, the census of India comes out with a damning statistic: the country's abysmal female-male ratio. As per the 2001 census, there …
Need vs greed
There is little talk of curbing water use in urban India. Cities’ insatiable water demand, coupled with leaky pipelines, is leading to …
Documenting the Northeast's tribal laws
Land is central to the tribal identity in the region too easily abbreviated 'northeast'. Jeuti baruah knows this too well. As director of the Law …
Cutting out waste
The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has recently initiated ecofriendly pilot projects at its Bangalore aircraft division, which will not only …
Herb dealers
In Himachal Pradesh's Kullu district is the Great Himalayan National Park. An eco-development project meant to benefit people of Tirthan and …
Controversial plan to sell water from Sheonath river
Ajit Jogi, Chhattisgarh chief minister, has announced an enquiry into the legality of India's first private project to supply water to industry …
Archaeology helps to unlearn too
Archaeology is the science that studies the remains of past cultures by investigating and analysing the objects people leave behind. It is a …
Craning glory: Demoiselle cranes find sanctuary in Rajasthan village
Kheechan village on the edge of the Thar desert lies on the migration route of demoiselle cranes travelling from their breeding grounds in …
What's cooking in India's largest biogas plant
Methan village in Sidhpur tehsil, Patan district of Gujarat saves 500 metric tonnes of fuelwood annually. They've been doing it for the last 15 …
Locating the State
In September 2004, Down To Earth carried a two-part editorial on the failure of the State to deliver basic services. In the September 15, 2004 …
Farming fish and mussels
When bad management and increasing demand for inland fish led to plummeting stocks, fishing villages around the Ashtamudi estuary in Kollam …
Monsoon of death
Every monsoon, Baba Raghav Das Medical College of Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, witnesses hundreds of children dying of viral encephalitis or Acute …
Fig leaf for the business world
That is what the Montreal Protocol, meant to do away with ozone depleting substances, has become. India's phase out programme under the protocol …
Drained India's inland wetlands
During the last ten years, India has lost about 38 per cent of its inland wetlands; in some districts, as much as 88 per cent of the wetlands …
A green company in a grey market
There was a time when Payinthulasi, a 40-year old herb gatherer of village Utchananthal in Virudunagar district of Tamil Nadu, had to trudge to …
Charming no more
The saperas (snake-charmers) of Delhi loive in a unique colony called Mollarbandhgaon. This community, located next to the Badarpur thermal power …
Climate is changing, and the Sundarban residents can feel it
The Sundarban delta region in the Bay of Bengal, with 10,000 square kilometres of estuarine mangrove forest and 102 islands, is the world's …
What it takes to clean a river
It is the tale of two European rivers. The Rhine and the Danube. No river system in the world has a density of industrial agglomerations …
Beyond The Billion
If post-Independence leaders of India had ensured full literacy, a solution would have been in sight for a lot of problems. Population, for one. …
BIG CAT CONUNDRUM
The tiger occupies a hallowed seat in India. Ecologists believe that millions of small ecological processes live out their routine lives under …
Short circuit
On the face of it, the ambitious Sethusamudram project to bridge the east coast with the west coast of the country seems a great idea. The …