More than a year after Uttarakhand witnessed one of the worst natural disasters in the country, several flood-hit areas in the state are still waiting for government assistance. One such village is Sumdum in Pithoragarh district. The 120-odd families there live in the fear that floods will strike again…
Authors: Soma Basu, Aparna Pallavi, Kundan Pandey, Jitendra Raghveer Lal was 22 and full of life. Standing amid the fast ripening crops of peas, pigeon pea and black gram in village Ramgadha in Damoh district of Madhya Pradesh, he would often dream of a bumper harvest and a…
Mita Gupta of Delhi visits a retail shop, goes to the personal care section, looks for the familiar toothpaste, picks it up, brings it home, takes the tube out and throws the packet into a bin. She does not even glance at the elaborate information printed on the packet. And…
Many houses illegally constructed near the river crumbled in Uttarkashi town (Photographs: Pushkar Rawat) Only a month ago, Vipin, a mule herder who ferried tourists and pilgrims from Gangotri to Gaumukh, was worried that a new “government rule” would rob him and his brethren of livelihood. “The rule will kick…
SURVIVORS OF THE UTTARAKHAND FLASH FLOODS SHARE HAIR-RAISING TALES OF THEIR ORDEAL AND YET-TOBE-EXPLAINED FREAK WALLS OF WATER GUSHING DOWN HILL SLOPES. SOMA BASU REPORTS FROM GROUND ZERO HOW THE TRAGEDY UNFOLDED At 7.18 pm on June 16, Ram Singh heard the loudest crack in 45 years of his life.…
Members of SWaCH at a press conference with bags of soiled sanitary napkins addressed to the manufacturers (Photographs Courtesy : SWACH) For two years, a waste pickers’ cooperative in Pune had been trying to draw the attention of sanitary napkin makers towards the woes of waste pickers, who segregate and…
Electronic waste is a mine of precious metals, but poor regulations simplify its squandering away The old, dilapidated mobile phone you replaced with a snazzy, up-to-date version was disposed of properly at the company’s collection centre. You think it has been discarded in an environment friendly way. But often that…