P.V. Satheesh, founder and Executive Director of the Deccan Development Society passed away on 19 March, 2023. Periyapatna Venkatasubbaiah Satheesh – P.V. Satheesh to friends – was born in Mysore in 1945. He studied mass communication and television production at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication and the Film and Television Institute of India. He joined Doordarshan as a senior producer and worked on programming related to rural development and...

On 6 February, 2023 Southern Turkey and the adjoining areas in Syria were hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake followed by several aftershocks. The tremors have flattened buildings and destroyed roads and other infrastructure. At least 35,000 casualties (UPDATE) have occurred across Turkey and Syria, with the vast majority being in the former nation. A news report cited the Turkish environment minister saying that 24,921 buildings across the region had collapsed. What...

-Press release by World Bank dated November 14, 2022 NEW DELHI: A new World Bank report estimates that India will need to invest $840 billion over the next 15 years—or an average of $55 billion per annum—into urban infrastructure if it is to effectively meet the needs of its fast-growing urban population. The report, titled “Financing India’s Urban Infrastructure Needs: Constraints to Commercial Financing and Prospects for Policy Action” underlines the...

-The Telegraph Radhakamal Mukerjee: an ecological pioneer In 1922, a professor at Lucknow University named Radhakamal Mukerjee published a book called Principles of Comparative Economics. Reading the book one hundred years later, I was struck by the attention it paid to the impact of the natural environment on the social and economic life of Indian villages. Mukerjee was perhaps the first Indian scholar to recognise the vital importance of common property resources...

-Down to Earth With sustainable development goals in place, increasing democratisation and connectivity of the world, ecologisation of politics and vice-versa will become the new norm Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai wrote: In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may  seem so obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and  peace. Decreasing resource base and the  struggle for control and power leads to politicising ecological issues...