Ponds for strongmen

Village heavyweights use natural farming methods

Confluence of thoughts

Water warriors from across India shared their experiences in harvesting water at a conference, which aimed to 'Make Water Everybody's Business'

Seed restoration

Rooted to earth

Twist in the TRIPS tale

UK panel endorses South's stand on intellectual property rights

The rural weather department

Folklore guides farmers about droughts and rains

Penny foolish, pond wise

Once parched, Dewas in Madhya Pradesh is now a lush green district

Let the wind chase fire

Soligas of BR Hills say litter fire is the only way to salvage the sanctuary

A treasure too good to lose

Mexicans are fighting hard to save their traditional maize from the onslaught of GM hybrids and US exports

Growing fences

Burgeoning population and agricultural encroachment in the last half century have erected artificial walls within the Gond tribes. These ethnic …

Living with lions

Where are the tapovans?

Both India and China are ancient civilisations possessing characteristic indigenous knowledge of conservation of natural ecosystems. The Chinese …

Goa's disappearing khazan farms dying a slow death

Farmers in tech trap

Cotton cultivators are on a seed and pesticide treadmill that is draining them of traditional skills  

Colours of Nature

An organisation in Mumbai documents the presence of dyeing pigments in microbes and plants

The inside story

Bad health is good business. The pharmaceutical industry knows that. But now bad health is turning out to be good business for the food industry …

Which way out?

Industry and people's rights organisations in India are at loggerheads over the shaping of the biodiversity bill and amendments to the existing …

Touch that heals trees

Bamboo flowering

People in northeast India fear bamboo flowering. According to an ancient belief when bamboos flower, there is death and destruction.

Aaj Ka Roadshow

Liberalisation in India has not only affected humdrum life, but also popular cultural forms. This is palpable in the changing dynamics of the big …

Without a trace

Medicinal plant biodiversity is rapidly vanishing in India and the government has still to come up with a plan of action

The secret garden

Want to know about a lost variety of rice or a cure to asthma? Answers lie in the notebooks of schoolchildren and women of the Sundarbans and …

Paying farmers for ecological services

A belief in tradition

It was a unique ceremony for a unique award given to a unique rural community of India. In what is perhaps the first ceremony of its kind, …

Back in f(l)avour

Entry of high yielding hybrid rice has spelt doom for traditional diversity in the Konkan belt. Thanks to a science academy, the ancient legacy …