FIGHTING FOR AIR
Weighed down by extremely high levels of particles in the air, some Indian cities seem to be coming of age with regard to vehicular air pollution.…
Elementary failure
Since the Right To Education Act came into force on April 1, 2010, India has been witnessing an experiment that involves parents in enforcing a …
Unique identity crisis
Biometric-based unique identity or Aadhaar is leading to huge problems for people working for the rural employment guarantee scheme and for …
On privatising water
What about privatising water? Should India move to do it? What tips the scales in its favour, and what doesn't? In 2003, two editorials in Down …
Rights without benefits
Over 1.3 million tribals and forest dwellers have got rights over the land they had been using for years under the Forest Rights Act. This can, …
Buttermilk - glass of better cheer
In the past, nothing went to waste in a homestead, including the liquid left after churning out butter from curd
Drumsticks for health
Every traditional Malayalee home has a tulsi plant in front of the house and a drumstick tree in the backyard. The drumstick tree (Moringa …
Housing Scheme
Hermit crabs aren't fussy creatures. Faced with a housing crunch, in many parts of the world, they have taken up abode in plastic and junk left …
How Australian aborigines read the weather
The Aboriginal people of Australia have been around for at least 50,000 years, overcoming the most adverse conditions. During this period they …
Win some, lose most
To find out what the Union Budget has in store for science and the environment, Down To Earth spoke to environmentalists and representatives …
The great divide
For the urban Indian, upwardly mobile on auto-power, livestock means products like milk and meat. For 75 per cent of India living in villages, it …
Meet Deben Bora
As field researchers will tell, you don't get up one fine morning and cut through an unknown forest in search of an elusive animal species. Even …
We are all the same
At first sight, two humans may seem to differ enormously. But looks can be misleading. Among animals, humans make up an unusual group. All humans …
Defiant
The Bilirangan Temple Sanctuary in Karnataka bristles with angry Soligas. Their sustenance denied, the tribals deliberate their next move
Fantastic workers of the terrain
About 4,000 years ago, people in Lothal showed us how best to integrate land and water management practices
Biocontrol Backfires
South American cane toads introduced into Australia to check sugarcane pests have become a menace
On a limb and a prayer
In Delhis not-too-fashionable areas, Sayantan Bera photographs musclemen who set sprains and fractures right
Breakdown
Government is sponsoring unsustainability at the cost of traditons which have sustained India
Mapping the subcontinent
In 2002, the Survey of India began a year-long programme which celebrated 200 years of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, a mammoth cross-country …
Rickshaw pullers get together
On January 5, 2003 hundreds of rickshaw pullers in Hyderabad got together to declare: "Protect our right on roads."
Succour for cancer patients
Many terminally ill cancer patients have found succour in the last stages of their life at this Shanti Avedna Ashram , set up in 1978 by …
Schooled in self-rule
What do tribal children living in Nagarhole National Park in Karnataka learn at school? Take pride in what they are, reports NITIN SETHI
The tribe that disappeared
For over five decades, the Durua tribe in Orissa was not recognised because of a mistake in the Centre's list of scheduled tribes made in 1951...
Young states push for growth, ignore environment
The relatively younger states in India are making a big push for industrialisation. In the process, they are eating into fertile agricultural land,…
The morning after
Human excreta is rich in soil nutrients. In a year, one person craps 4.56 kg of nitrogen (n), 0.55 kg phosphorus (p) and 1.28 kg potassium (k)&…