CATEGORIES

‘Weavers Of Bengal Were An Incredible Asset For The East India Company'

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE IS HABITUATED TO HIS BOOKS CREATING A BUZZ. HIS LATEST, THE ANARCHY, FOCUSES ON HOW A JOINT- STOCK COMPANY, ESTABLISHED BY THE MERCHANTS OF LONDON, TOOK OVER PRACTICALLY THE ENTIRE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT BETWEEN 1756 AND 1803. RAJAT GHAI SPEAKS TO THE HISTORIAN-AUTHOR ABOUT THE EAST INDIA COMPANY AND THE FACTORS THAT LED TO ITS ASCENT IN SOUTH ASIA. EXCERPTS:

A Perfect Zero

Cities in the Philippines have adopted zero waste model to manage their waste. It's not just turning their waste to gold, but also making the surroundings clean, green and environmentally sustainable

Seed Money

CHIRONJI, A MILDLY SWEET NUT, ENSURES THAT FOREST DWELLERS NEVER RUN OUT OF CASH

Lockdown's Other Victim

Walnut tree has been the strange casualty of Kashmir’s transition from a state to a Union Territory

Let It Flow

Two private and one government owners of dams on the Ganga refuse to follow the upcoming water discharge guidelines necessary for the cleaning and rejuvenation of the river

Chaos Deferred

India's withdrawl from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership sits well in this era of hyper deglobalisation. It now needs a roadmap to make the domestic economy competitive.

Farmer And The New-Age Health Market

India’s booming nutraceutical market provides a big opportunity to farmer producer organisations

Himachal's Affair With Flowers

Farmers in Himachal Pradesh are ditching traditional food crops to grow aromatic plants that offer higher and assured returns

“Community Rights Over Common Lands Must Be Recognised”

COMMONS LIKE GRAZING LANDS, WASTELANDS, LAKES AND COMMUNITY FORESTS ARE RAPIDLY VANISHING, PUTTING THE LIVELIHOODS OF MARGINALISED PEOPLE AT RISK. JITENDRA SPOKE TO RUTH MEINZEN-DICK, A SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW AT THE US-BASED INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, ON THE COMMONS, COMMUNITIES AND POLICIES

Default By Design?

As the Union government’s PM-KISAN scheme completes a crop cycle, farmers complain of exclusion and partial cash support

Powerful Winds Of Change

Technological improvements and falling costs are driving a boom in offshore wind power projects worldwide. Still, the industry faces its own peculiar share of challenges

Debunking Myths On Migration

ABHIJIT V BANERJEE and ESTHER DUFLO, who jointly won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences recently, say that wage differences between countries have little to do with whether or not people migrate. In fact, evidence suggests that migration makes both migrants and local people better off

Chambal In The Making

Soil erosion has triggered expansion of ravines in four districts of Gujarat, threatening agriculture and livelihood

The Weather Paywall

There will be heavy rainfall in... (subscribe to read on). That’s how all weather information will be delivered in the future, if private players are allowed to have their way. The chase to control and commodify forecast data is heating up. Competition could lead to greater accuracy in predictions, but it might also corrupt the public service that has so far been free.

Burst Of Spice

Bhut Jolokia, One Of The Hottest Chillies, Went Through A Dip In Its Intense Spiciness And Price When Its Production Spread And Cross- Pollination Began On A Large Scale

What The Dog Saw

Noel Fitzpatrick, The Celebrity Vet Behind The Channel 4 Show The Supervet, Recounts His Often-surprising Journey In A Memoir That Celebrates The Bond Between Humans And Animals

Relocation Charade

21 tribal families say forest officials allied with property dealers to dupe them of the money they received for relocating from Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai Tiger Reserve

Towards Turbulence

As countries grapple with intense marine heat waves and stronger storms, the latest IPCC report says climate change has already altered our oceans, polar regions and high snowy mountains

Congratulations! India Is Open Defecation Free

On Mahatma Gandhi’s 150 th birthday, India becomes open defecation free. While it is an occasion to celebrate the achievement of creating millions of toilets in record time, it is also a time to plan for ensuring that the gains made are not lost and the pollution remains checked. Down To Earth reporters travel to 13 districts in six states to gauge if India can sustain its open defecation-free status, while Sushmita Sengupta and Snigdha Das analyse the challenges ahead

Insects As Food!

Will insects become an integral part of our diets, again?

How Food Travelled Throughout The World

Evolution ensured people adopted new foods through generations of experiments. But in a fast globalising age, this tradition has been bypassed

Mahatma Gandhi's Environmentalism

Gandhi’s personal lifestyle choices are not what make him crucial to the future of our species. What matters more is to understand why Gandhi anticipated the environmental crisis more than half a century before the term “sustainable development” was coined.

The Peasant Rebels

THE BOOK IS A FICTIONAL RETELL OF THE SATNAMI REVOLT AGAINST AURANGZEB, AND UNDERLINES THE IMPORTANCE OF REBELLION IN TIMES OF OPPRESSION

The Importance Of Justification In Conservation

Why we should not stray away from the idea of justice in conservation in a rapidly changing planet

The Gaps In Closing The Ozone Hole

The cooling industry which first drilled the hole in the ozone layer is now burning the whole planet

The Union Government Lends A Helping Hand To A Multinational Central

The Centre’s decision to provide only fortified food items under government schemes will ensure an annual market of over ₹3,000 crore to just five multinational companies

How To Create Floods

Dams were built to control floods. They are now the triggers

Transition In Nilgiris

A laggard hill district’s journey to become open defecation free also led to it embracing organic farming

Tracking Smoke

Effective implementation of an efficient pollution monitoring system is caught in delays

Full Measure

THE ROLE OF THE NATIONAL AQUIFER MAPPING AND MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME IS CRITICAL TO REVERSE THE TREND OF DEPLETING GROUNDWATER LEVELS ACROSS INDIA