Karthikeyan Hemalatha

Sustainable agricultural practices and banks of indigenous seeds have transformed the lives of some of the most marginalised farmers in Telangana, India. It has also given them the economic resilience to withstand the impact of the pandemic.

Farmers in India are perpetually stuck in a cycle of bad weather, fallow soil, crashing prices, crushing debts, eventually pushed into suicide. Women farmers face the additional burden of patriarchy, caste-system, and ensuring food security for their children. To escape these clutches, a movement in the mid-80s encouraged women to grow millets - which are not just nutritious but also hardy enough to withstand the vagaries of Telangana's climate. The movement, initiated by the Deccan Developme...

Sixty-five-year-old M Mogullamma, a Dalit farmer from Telangana, is almost offended when asked if the pandemic, the lockdown and the economic slowdown affected her livelihood. “I had a good produce this year, more than we needed to survive,” she says. She is part of a collective of 5,000-odd women, Deccan Development Society (DDS), which promotes sustainable and community-led organic farming.
The women farmers of Sangareddy district, who are part of DDS, say they’ve been the exception in a ye...

The organization DDS encourages women to form groups for organic community farming in the Indian state of Telangana, also to build up solidarity among themselves. So the women remained unfazed by the corona pandemic and by a historic flood in 2020.

Experts warn loss of ecology will lead to more pandemics, India uses lockdown to dilute environmental laws.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Diwali celebrations had begun one week early in the small Indian village of Thulasendrapuram....

In recent years, India has been praised for its commitment to renewables. Since signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, the world's fifth largest economy has increased solar capacity nearly ninefold and pledged to radically cut emissions.
Yet at the same time, the country is still heavily reliant on the most polluting of fossil fuels. Despite making strides in increasing the capacity of renewable energy, India still hasn't developed a policy to phase out coal.

From just over 11 megawatt (MW) of solar in 2010, India had installed 35.1 gigawatt (GW) of solar power as of June 2020, scaling up its solar capacity by over 3,000 times in less than a decade. Riding on political support, business interest, as well as positive public opinion, large-scale solar projects have come to be viewed as the silver bullet to India’s energy demands while mitigating carbon emissions.

Rajalakshmi takes pride in her prawn gravy. The trick, she says, is to add prawns to a boiling pot of gravy as soon as her husband comes home, usually in the wee hours of the morning, with a fresh catch harvested from nearby Pulicat Lake. “You won’t get this taste anywhere else,” she says.

Officials from the fisheries dept, the police and the panchayats use the radio station to announce new protocols.

More than 1,000 young Indians, who were actively participating in protests against CAA, have now turned their focus on providing food for the needy during the lockdown
Utilizing the wide network created during the protests, the youth are identifying clusters that need food, mobile recharges and money, and are raising funds through word of mouth.

Chennai, India - Rajinikanth, one of India's biggest film stars, has faced protests over a controversial remark about Periyar EV Ramaswamy, an anti-caste icon known for his work among unprivileged caste Hindus in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
Periyar, born in 1879, is considered the father of the Dravidian Movement, which called for social reforms to end privileged caste domination of Hinduism, thereby opening the door for the socially disadvantaged sections of the society.

The tsunami, which killed some 230,000 people across 14 countries, also saw a big outpouring of donations. Relief measures from the tsunami triggered investments in boats and nets all across the state, leading to overcapacity in fishing.

In Chennai, which has seen a string of extreme weather events, the threat of climate change is real and has been a wake-up call

India has made progress in the promotion of solar energy in the recent years. However, two recent decisions can dampen this progress.

The imposition of import duty on solar panels from China has raised the cost of solar energy production. Also, India’s pulling out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership has an adverse impact.

Solar energy expert Tim Buckley, spoke with Karthikeyan Hemalatha about the impact of these two developments.