-The Times of India SURAT: The harnessing of solar energy has made Diu the country’s first energy surplus Union territory and a model for an effective way for people to harness this renewable energy source. In just three years, Diu has made rapid progress in solar power generation. The Union territory has an area of just 42 square kilometres. Despite scarcity of land, solar power plants have been installed over more than...

-The Hindu What Dhrubajyoti Ghosh closely observed and learnt from Kolkata’s wetland communities If ever there was someone who lived true to his name, it was Dhrubajyoti Ghosh. In Sanskrit, “Dhrubajyoti” refers to the light (jyoti) emitted by the pole star (dhruva tara). The ecologist, who passed away in February, was unwavering in his commitment to the cause he lived for and fearlessly defended: saving the ecologically critical East Kolkata Wetlands from...

-TheWire.in At a time when food has provided so much grist for the identitarian and nativist mill, it is important to infuse into public discourse a modicum of reason through facts. For long, India has been mythologised as a vegetarian, and particularly beef-eschewing, society. Such a representation has further been ideologically explained (and justified) by a wide range of scholars, politicians and popular discourse by constructing India as a society primarily shaped...

-The Hindu Business Line An analysis of how agri concerns will play out in four poll-bound States this year has some key takeaways for politicians ‘Rural distress’ became the major economic narrative to interpret the recent Assembly elections results for Gujarat, specifically the fact that rural support for the incumbent government was considerably less than the support from cities. The woes of the rural sector could be a bigger issue this year. Of...

-TheWire.in Environmentalist and water management expert Ravi Chopra says river inter-linking will sow the seeds for future conflicts between states. There is nothing new about the proposed river-interlinking project being pushed by the government, and this ‘unnecessary excess’ of a project will create more problems than it promises to solve, says environmentalist and water management expert, Dr Ravi Chopra, the director of People’s Science Institute, Dehradun and a managing trustee of the...