In some remote villages in India, which are most unlikely to pose as models of development, a quiet rejuvenation is taking place, with communities learning to adapt to the climate change reality of the country today. Everyone knows by now that one of the foremost signs of climate change for the country is the changing pattern of the monsoon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already forecast shorter yet...

Today, the Supreme Court of India will hear arguments in what is emerging as a national disgrace: One of the world’s largest stockpiles of foodgrain going to rot and rodent because the government lacks the vision, ability and commitment to either store it properly or distribute it to the poor. Let me recap what I reported on the front-page of this paper last month: About a third of India’s grain reserves,...

Complexity and unsolved problems are at the very heart of the sustainability challenge, and at the very heart of M.S. Swaminathan's thinking and essays. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus offered the piercing insight that geometric population growth would inevitably outstrip food production, leaving society destitute and hungry. Since that time, our optimism of beating the “Malthusian curse” has waxed and waned. Few people in modern history have done more to help...

About 85,000 people in three south-western districts of Odisha have been affected by flash floods as rivers submerged vast areas following heavy rains, state Revenue and Disaster Management minister S N Patro said here today. In 151 villages of the affected blocks, relief camps have been set up and food served to the affected people through community kitchen, Patro told reporters after a visit to the flood-hit districts of Nabarangpur,...

India’s monsoon rains were about 3% above normal in July, the highest for the month since 2005, making a repeat of last year’s crop failure and food-led inflation surge unlikely. heavy rain since the third week of July has brought readings above normal for the first time this monsoon season, according to weather office data, wiping out the seasonal shortfall in almost all major grain areas other than in the east...