This story is part of “How Does It Work?” — The Better India’s series that takes the everyday things you see, use and rely on, and uncovers the clever technology, design and sustainable thinking that makes them work better. From the objects in your home to the systems around you, we break down the ideas behind them in simple, easy-to-understand language. Because innovation isn’t always about futuristic machines or complicated technology. Sometimes, it’s hiding in the things we use every day.

Early in the morning, a farm can look deceptively simple. Rows of crops stretch across the field, their roots hidden beneath the soil. Water flows through pipes or drip lines, reaching the plants where it is needed.

But how much water is enough?

Too little can leave plants stressed. Too much can waste water and leave the soil excessively wet. For farmers managing large fields, checking every patch of soil and adjusting irrigation manually is not always practical.

This is where smart irrigation systems come in. Instead of watering for a fixed amount of time, these systems can use information from the soil, weather, and plants to decide when irrigation is needed — and, in some systems, when it should stop.

What makes irrigation “smart”? 

A traditional irrigation timer may be programmed to turn on a sprinkler at 6 am for 30 minutes, regardless of whether it rained the previous evening.

A smart irrigation controller works differently. It receives information about conditions around the plants and uses it to adjust watering.

One common approach uses soil moisture sensors. These sensors are placed in the soil, usually around the root zone, and measure how much water is present. Since water changes the electrical properties of soil, sensors can estimate its moisture content.

Other systems use weather information. These may consider factors such as temperature, rainfall, humidity, wind, and sunlight to estimate how much water plants are losing through evaporation and transpiration — together known as evapotranspiration (ET).

So, how does it know when to stop?

Think of the system as a simple conversation between three parts: sensor, controller, and valve.

First, the sensor takes a reading of the soil. The controller then compares that reading with a moisture level or “threshold” programmed for the particular system.

If the soil is too dry, the controller can send an electrical signal to open a valve. Water then flows through drip lines or sprinklers towards the crops.

As watering continues, the moisture level in the soil changes.

In an on-demand soil moisture system, there can be two thresholds: a lower level that tells the system to start watering and a higher level that tells it to stop. Once the sensor detects that the soil has reached the desired moisture level, the controller closes the valve and irrigation ends.

It is essentially a feedback loop: measure → compare → water → measure again.

What if it rains?

This is where smart irrigation can become even more useful: a rain sensor can detect rainfall and prevent a scheduled irrigation cycle from starting when the soil has already received enough water. Weather-based systems can also use rainfall and other weather data to reduce or suspend irrigation.

For example, if a system expects a certain amount of water to be lost from the soil during hot, dry weather, it can adjust its watering accordingly. During cooler or wetter conditions, the amount of irrigation can be reduced.

Some modern systems bring these inputs together through a controller or connected platform, allowing users to monitor moisture, schedules, and alerts remotely.

Giving plants the right amount of water 

Smart irrigation does not simply make watering automatic. Its bigger idea is to make irrigation responsive.

Instead of asking, “How long should the sprinkler run today?”, the system can ask, “What do the soil and plants need right now?”

That shift can help reduce unnecessary watering while keeping moisture closer to the level crops need. And because the system continuously responds to changing conditions, irrigation can become more precise rather than relying entirely on fixed schedules.

In the field, the result is a small but important technological change: water flows when it is needed and can stop when the soil has received enough. By combining sensors, controllers, and weather data, smart irrigation turns a routine task into a responsive system, helping farmers use every drop more thoughtfully.

Sources:

'What Is Smart Irrigation?' by Hydropoint.

'Automatic Irrigation Systems: How Smart Watering Works?' by Palak Karavadiya for Promeraki.

'The Smart Irrigation Pillar: How Modern Watering Systems Actually Work' by Aiper, Published on 20 July 2026.

When a wedding procession moves through Chirgaon in Maharashtra’s Raigad district, there is one thing residents do not hear: a DJ.

The village has prohibited DJs and loudspeakers since 2002. The village also restricts firecrackers during festivals and other celebrations. The reason is that Chirgaon’s residents were trying to keep their vulture nests quiet.

Two decades ago, the village had only 22 vultures of two species, the white-rumped and long-billed vultures. Now, according to the last census in 2022, 347 vultures have been recorded in the area.

The recovery cannot be attributed to the DJ ban alone. 

It followed years of work by Premsagar Mestri, founder of the Society of Eco-Endangered Species Conservation and Protection (SEESCAP), along with local bird enthusiasts and villagers. They protected nesting trees, reduced human disturbance around breeding sites and worked to ensure food for the birds.

@maha_tourism MoS @iAditiTatkare has taken initiative for the conservation of #vultures in #Raigad district. With the help of @MahaForest & सिस्केप, some plans will be implemented & 44 he. RF area in Chirgaon may be proposed as 'vulture conservation reserve'. @AUThackeray https://t.co/rPDLd4Q8oB

— Akshay Mandavkar🌿 (@akshay_journo) February 5, 2021

When Mestri began looking into the decline of Chirgaon’s vultures, the problem had to be understood in the context of a much larger collapse.

India’s vulture population had fallen dramatically from the millions recorded in the 1980s. The decline of the white-rumped, long-billed and slender-billed vultures was particularly severe, with losses exceeding 90% in some species.

What does a DJ have to do with a vulture?

The science of noise pollution provides part of the answer.

A 2023 review in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution examined 48 peer-reviewed studies published between 1995 and 2021 on how chronic human-made noise affects animal communities.

In 38 of those studies, 79% researchers found at least one negative effect associated with noise exposure. These included reductions in abundance or species richness, nesting, offspring survival and hatching success. 

Birds featured in 38 of the 48 studies.

The researchers described several mechanisms through which noise can affect wildlife. Sound can mask signals animals depend on, interfere with communication, distract them from other information in their surroundings and trigger responses associated with perceived danger. 

Repeated exposure can also produce physiological stress.

The important point is that noise does not have to physically injure an animal to affect its survival.

For a breeding bird, behavioural disruption can be enough.

If an adult leaves its nest because of repeated disturbance, the immediate result may be a few minutes away from the egg or chick. But repeated interruptions can reduce nest attendance and alter feeding, incubation or protection of young. 

Over time, that can affect breeding success.

The researchers also caution that noise does not affect every species in the same way. Its impact depends on the animal, the type of sound, its intensity, frequency, duration and how often it occurs.

What happens when vultures hear people?

Vultures are not fast breeders. A breeding pair generally raises a single chick at a time, which means the loss of a nesting attempt can matter to a small recovering population.

In a 2006 study published in Biological Conservation, researchers Beatriz Arroyo and Martine Razin examined human disturbance around bearded vulture nests in France’s Pyrenees.

They found that human activities affected the birds’ behaviour, primarily by reducing the amount of time they spent attending their nests. The response depended on the activity and its distance from the nest.

The most striking finding concerned very noisy activities.

@maha_tourism MoS @iAditiTatkare has taken initiative for the conservation of #vultures in #Raigad district. With the help of @MahaForest & सिस्केप, some plans will be implemented & 44 he. RF area in Chirgaon may be proposed as 'vulture conservation reserve'. @AUThackeray https://t.co/rPDLd4Q8oB

— Akshay Mandavkar🌿 (@akshay_journo) February 5, 2021

These were among the activities most likely to cause the vultures to leave their nests, and the effect was recorded even when the activity occurred more than 1.5 km away. By comparison, walkers and cars or planes generally affected behaviour when they were within about 500–700 metres of the nest.

The study also found a relationship between the frequency of human activity and breeding failure. The probability of failure increased as human activities became more frequent, with particularly strong evidence for very noisy activities.

It is not a study of Indian vultures,and it does not establish a specific noise limit for Indian vultures. But it shows why disturbance during breeding can become a conservation concern.

So Chirgaon turned down the volume

Mestri and SEESCAP worked with then-sarpanch Kishor Gulgule and residents to make protection of the birds a community decision. The restrictions were later accompanied by measures to reduce other disturbances, including firecrackers, outsiders entering sensitive nesting areas and photography during the breeding season. 

The 43-hectare Chirgaon-Bagechiwadi Devrai, where the birds nest, has also been kept relatively free from unnecessary human activity

The objective was not to create a sanctuary sealed off from people. It was to reduce the kinds of disturbance that could make a breeding site unsuitable.

Sources:

‘Chirgaon Vulture Conservation: No DJ, No Fireworks Tradition Has Been Intact In Chirgaon For 26 Years’: By Leader News Service, Published on 19 September 2026

‘How chronic anthropogenic noise can affect wildlife communities’: By Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, Published on 5 April 2023

‘Threatened Vultures of India: Population, Ecology, and Conservation’: By EcoHealth, Published on 7 August 2025

‘Recent changes in populations of Critically Endangered Gyps vultures in India’: By Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Published in December 2017

This National Wildlife Week, we look at the many ways human choices shape our relationship with wildlife — from what we grow and believe to what we consume and how we understand animals. Through four stories, the series explores everyday conflicts and connections, and the people finding more thoughtful ways to share space with wildlife.

Think back to the first time you went somewhere new as a child. You probably didn't read a map. You held someone's hand, watched where they stepped, and slowly the road became yours.

Elephant calves learn the world in much the same way. Only their classroom is a forest that stretches across two countries, and their teacher is often the oldest female in the family, one who first walked this path decades ago.

Before dawn breaks over the forests, an elephant herd begins to move.

At the front walks the oldest female. She does not stop to search for the way ahead. She does not hesitate at the fork where two forest trails split. 

She turns with the confidence of someone who has been here many times before. She has, perhaps dozens of times over her life. There is no signboard here, no GPS, no one to ask for directions. There is only memory: hers, and before that, her mother's.

Behind her, the rest of the herd follows in single file. Mothers keep calves close to their sides. 

Incredible sight ! A big shout-out to Loco Pilot Das and Assistant Loco Pilot Umesh Kumar of the 15959 Kamrup Express for their swift and heroic action on 16th October in saving a herd of about 60 elephants crossing the railway tracks between Habaipur and Lamsakhang by applying… pic.twitter.com/otfQ3nwjDJ

— Supriya Sahu IAS (@supriyasahuias) October 18, 2024

None of the calves has ever made this journey. Yet, by the time the day ends, they will have crossed a river, entered another country and reached forests.

Across the Terai Arc Landscape, throughout the year, herds travel both ways between Uttar Pradesh's Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary and Nepal's Bardia National Park, using the same forested corridors their families have followed for generations. 

Elephants have culture. And every journey is how they pass it on.

Culture is a word we usually keep for ourselves. We use it for our languages, our festivals, the recipes our grandmothers never wrote down. So what could it possibly mean for an elephant?

The answer begins at a river.

Lessons on the move

By the time the herd reaches the Geruwa River, the current is strong after the rains, but the matriarch enters first. The younger females follow, while the smallest calves pause at the water's edge before placing their feet exactly where their mothers did moments earlier.

Adults instinctively close ranks, forming a loose circle around the youngest members as the family makes its way across. From a distance, it looks like an ordinary river crossing.

Look closer, conservationists say, and it becomes something else entirely.

According to Apoorv Dixit, Indian Forest Service officer and Divisional Forest Officer of the Katarniaghat Wildlife Division, elephants continue returning because the Terai still offers connected habitat, abundant water and food resources.

"The Terai region has abundant water, extensive sugarcane cultivation and suitable habitat," he says. "Earlier, elephants mostly used this landscape in transit. But over time, habitat fragmentation elsewhere may be influencing their behaviour."

He believes changes across parts of the Nepal landscape may also be shaping how herds use the corridor today, making connected forests in the Indian Terai increasingly important.

Yet what stays with him most is the river crossing itself.

"It is one of the most beautiful sights you can witness," Dixit tells The Better India. "Entire herds crossing together. The babies often stop to play in the water or try to swim while the adults wait. It shows how deeply social they are."

That image captures moments which are difficult to express through numbers.

The calves are learning where the river is shallow enough to cross, how to move with the current, when to wait and when to follow. 

Nobody hands them instructions. Think of a child who learns to cross a busy road by holding a parent's hand, watching and copying, until one day they do it alone. The calves learn the same way, simply by being there.

A train of elephants crossing a railway line. Elephant herd size varies from small to big. I have seen a single herd of upto 95 elephants once. Keep counting in this family. pic.twitter.com/shAFYXUNmG

— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) October 30, 2024

In biology, culture refers to knowledge and behaviours learned socially and passed from one generation to another, rather than inherited through DNA. For elephants, this includes migration routes, feeding areas, communication, responses to danger and even the timing of seasonal movements. Their world is built not only on instinct but also on memory.

Now, even the law is beginning to catch up

On August 17, 2026, the Supreme Court stepped in to protect these ancient pathways, making it clear that elephants cannot be stopped simply because their journeys cross into farms or human settlements. 

Hearing a matter concerning the protection of wildlife corridors, a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant observed, “We are very clear that there cannot be obstacles in the way of wildlife. Elephant herds have a practice of travelling long distances.” 

The Court directed the Centre to conduct a fresh, nationwide survey of elephant corridors and identify obstructions, while making clear that crop damage cannot be used as a justification to block traditional routes. 

The herd's living library

At the centre of this system stands the matriarch.

Unlike species where leadership depends on physical strength, elephant societies are led by experience. The oldest female carries decades of knowledge gathered through repeated journeys across forests, rivers and grasslands.

She remembers which waterholes survive the driest summers.  She knows where bamboo regenerates after the rains and where mineral-rich salt licks lie hidden beneath the forest floor. She recognises safe river crossings and understands which routes have become difficult as landscapes change.

Her memory becomes the herd's map. Sometimes that map decides who survives. Researchers who studied African elephants in Tanzania during a severe drought made a striking finding. Families led by older matriarchs, who remembered an earlier drought and knew where water might still be found, lost far fewer calves than families led by younger females.

Migration is therefore much more than movement between two places.

Why elephants return

Across India, from the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in the south to the forests of Assam, Odisha, northern West Bengal and the Terai, herds continue to follow ancient pathways now recognised as elephant corridors.

GPS tracking has shown that elephants repeatedly return to the same river crossings, forest clearings and seasonal feeding grounds with striking accuracy. They are not wandering in search of habitat. 

They are retracing journeys learned from earlier generations.

The Katarniaghat elephant corridor offers one of the clearest examples of this continuity.

Stretching across India and Nepal, it connects Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary with Bardia National Park, allowing elephants, tigers and rhinos to move freely across an ecological landscape that predates political borders.

Long before an international boundary separated the two countries, these forests were one connected ecosystem. The elephants still behave as though they are.

"The presence of natural barriers such as rivers is not a problem," says Sitangshu Das, Assistant Projects Manager (Biodiversity) at Nature Environment & Wildlife Society (NEWS).

"Ill-conceived development that leads to forest loss and fragmentation affects elephant movement across landscapes and hinders connectivity."

“When corridors disappear, elephants risk losing opportunities to pass on knowledge that has accumulated over generations”, he adds.

A calf prevented from walking a traditional route cannot learn it. If enough generations miss that journey, an entire migration tradition may fade.

Elephants rise by pushing others👌
An Elephant herd crossing a elephant proof(?) trench.
The way some of them push others while going up is just amazing family behaviour.

Nice one shared by colleague ⁦@verma_akash⁩. pic.twitter.com/ID9tiRGVCX

— Susanta Nanda IFS (Retd) (@susantananda3) August 15, 2020

It's a bit like a family recipe that nobody cooks anymore. Once the last person who remembers it is gone, no cookbook can bring it back.

This understanding is changing how conservation is approached in landscapes like Katarniaghat.

Since October 2023, the Gajamitra (Friend of the Elephant) programme has placed local communities at the centre of that effort.

Villagers trained under the initiative monitor elephant movements, alert nearby settlements, patrol forest edges and help guide herds safely without causing harm.

"Our objective is not only to reduce crop losses or property damage but to create an environment where people and elephants can coexist safely and sustainably," says Ajanta Dey, Joint Secretary and Programme Director at NEWS.

"At NEWS, we believe that the future of conservation lies in combining science, community stewardship and strong institutional partnerships."

For forest officials, the crossings remind them of how deeply these traditions are embedded.

So that calf splashing in the Geruwa River is doing more than playing. It is rehearsing a journey it will repeat throughout its life.

Years from now, one of those calves will become the matriarch. She will lead another generation across the same forests, pause at familiar bends in the river, and choose paths she first learned while walking beside her mother.

That is how their culture survives.

What if the greatest gift a mother and daughter could give each other is permission to be themselves?

This Daughter’s Day, we’re celebrating a bond where daughters can tell their mothers, “Go be the woman you want to be,” and mothers can remind their daughters, “You don’t have to become who the world expects you to be.”

Permission to change, start over, dream differently, work, travel, dance, fail and begin again. To be more than someone’s daughter or someone’s mother, and build an identity of their own.

Because the most beautiful mother-daughter bonds don’t make women fit into expectations. They make them feel safe enough to become themselves.

#DaughtersDay #DaughterMotherBond #MotherDaughter #MotherDaughterLove #InspiringWomen #WomenEmpowerment #BreakingStereotypes #WomenSupportingWomen #StrongWomen #IndependentWomen #ModernMotherhood #WomenOfIndia #Daughter #TheBetterIndia

[Daughters Day, Daughter’s Day India, mother daughter bond, inspiring mother daughter stories, mother daughter relationship, women breaking stereotypes, women empowerment India, inspiring women India, mother daughter inspiration, daughters supporting mothers, mothers supporting daughters, women finding their identity, women living life on their own terms, breaking societal expectations for women, strong mother daughter bond]

Why Mother-Daughter Bonds Can Change How Women See Themselves
Daughter’s Day: Celebrating Women Who Choose Their Own Path
How Mothers and Daughters Help Each Other Break Stereotypes
More Than a Mother or Daughter: Finding Your Own Identity
The Mother-Daughter Bond That Lets Women Be Themselves

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“We are using our own hands to clean the poison people throw away.”

What started as a few people cleaning their surroundings has grown into a community movement. Since 1 September 2018, Vinay Das and his team have worked every Sunday without stopping. More than 1,600 children and young people have joined, with around 350 active volunteers.

Together, they have cleaned parks, lanes, the Yamuna banks and several ghats along a 3-km stretch of the Munak Canal. In just their last two Munak Canal drives, 50 metric tonnes of waste was removed, a figure also recorded in MCD records. They also plant trees and care for the saplings for three months.

But sometimes, the biggest reward isn’t a number. It’s a child saying, “Bhaiya, my lane is clean today. Maa is happy.” Now Vinay has an even bigger dream: to build a school for 1,500 children and teach them to become protectors of the environment.

Know someone who is doing their bit for their community? Tag them below.

#Delhi #CivicSense #CleanIndia #CommunityAction #DelhiVolunteers #CleanDelhi #WasteManagement

The Teesta was carrying the calf away.

Near Spur Number 12, in the Malbazar subdivision of Jalpaiguri district in Bengal, a few fishermen noticed the tiny elephant being pulled along by the river's current. It was barely a few days old and had already been separated from its herd.

The fishermen were out on the river when they saw it struggling in the water. They turned their boat towards the calf and followed it through the current for nearly three kilometres before they could reach it.

By then, the calf had travelled several kilometres from where its herd had attempted to cross the Teesta.

They pulled it into the boat.

In the video that followed, the exhausted calf is seen being held close by the fishermen.

For many people watching the footage, the image looked unmistakably like a hug.

The moment has since travelled far beyond the river.

Shared widely on social media, it has drawn praise for the fishermen who went after the calf and for the forest officials who helped reunite it with its mother.

For a newborn elephant calf, the Teesta River became a terrifying journey away from his mother.

Only 3–4 days old, he was swept nearly 5 km downstream by the river’s powerful currents while crossing with his mother.

As the calf struggled to stay afloat, five local fishermen… pic.twitter.com/JqgBhJvmtT

— The Better India (@thebetterindia) September 22, 2026

But what does a newborn elephant actually experience when humans suddenly have to handle it? And when a calf appears to embrace the people rescuing it, is that really what is happening?

To understand that moment, The Better India spoke to veterinarian Nick Doley, who cared for the calf after its rescue.

He moves the explanation towards the animal itself.

For a wild elephant that young, the objective of a rescue is not to make the animal comfortable around people. It is to get it safely back to its herd.

Unpacking the viral video

“Elephants are highly social animals, and physical contact is a normal part of their lives, so the hug is normal,” Doley explains. “Calves remain close to members of their herd and routinely interact through touch.”

So when the fishermen held the calf after bringing it out of the river, the physical contact itself was not necessarily extraordinary from the elephant's point of view.

The image may look like an emotionally charged exchange between a human rescuer and a frightened wild animal.

But the veterinarian says there were no signs suggesting that the calf was displaying a trauma response to the rescue.

In other words, the calf's willingness to remain in physical contact with the fishermen should not automatically be interpreted as the animal seeking human affection or responding to its ordeal in the way a person might.

The touch is simply part of elephant social behaviour.

That fact matters because viral wildlife images can easily be interpreted through a human lens.

The journey through the Teesta

The calf was exhausted when it was brought in, something the veterinary team attributed to its prolonged movement through the water.

There was also a slight abrasion near its back. But there was no major injury, and the minor abrasion did not require medication.

“We did not apply or administer any medicine,” Doley says. “It was a minor abrasion, so there was no treatment as such.”

That limited intervention was deliberate.

With a wild elephant calf only a few days old, the veterinary priority was not prolonged treatment or keeping it under human care. It was getting the calf back to its mother.

“With a wild calf, we wanted the baby to be in the mother's care first,” Doley says.

And that is the second important part of the rescue story.

The fishermen's intervention was necessary because the calf was in immediate danger. But once the immediate danger had passed, the best place for the animal was not with its rescuers. It was with its herd.

Why human contact can be complicated

There is a reason wildlife rescuers are careful about how much contact they have with young wild animals.

In some circumstances, prolonged human intervention can create problems when an animal is returned to its group. There have been cases in wildlife rescue where excessive human handling has raised concerns about whether a herd will accept a separated calf again.

But Doley says that concern did not apply in the same way here.

The calf was only around three days old, and the physical contact occurred as part of an immediate rescue. There was no indication that the human handling had caused the kind of response that would prevent reunion with its mother.

Then came the test

Once the calf had been assessed, the veterinary team found it fit for release, including during the weight assessment.

The calf was then reunited with its mother. Soon afterwards, it drank milk.

For the veterinary team, that was an encouraging sign because a newborn elephant nursing after such an ordeal indicated that the calf was able to return to an essential part of its normal behaviour.

The forest department is continuing to monitor the calf and the herd using drones.

That allows officials to keep track of the animals while limiting further physical disturbance.

What the viral image leaves out

The photograph of the fishermen holding the calf is powerful because it compresses the entire rescue into one frame.

It shows the moment humans intervened. Calling the moment a hug is an understandable human description. If anything, it makes the rescue more revealing.

The fishermen's intervention bought the calf a chance to survive. The forest department then helped return it to the animal that mattered most in its life.

But the real measure of the rescue was what happened after the cameras stopped: the calf went back to being an elephant.

This story is part of “How Does It Work?” — The Better India’s series that takes the everyday things you see, use and rely on, and uncovers the clever technology, design and sustainable thinking that makes them work better. From the objects in your home to the systems around you, we break down the ideas behind them in simple, easy-to-understand language. Because innovation isn’t always about futuristic machines or complicated technology. Sometimes, it’s hiding in the things we use every day.

In just a couple of months, the air across Delhi-NCR will start feeling different.

The skies will turn hazier, morning walks may become less inviting, and checking the air quality index could become as routine as checking the weather. For many people, winter also means reaching for masks, keeping windows shut, and wondering whether that familiar layer of haze is fog, smog or a bit of both.

And this is not only a Delhi problem. Air pollution affects people across Indian cities, with pollutants such as fine particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and other harmful gases contributing to respiratory and cardiovascular health risks.

But what if, alongside efforts to reduce these pollutants at their source, some of the surfaces around us could help break down a few of them too?

That is where smog-eating paint comes in.

What exactly is smog-eating paint?

Despite the catchy name, this is not ordinary paint that traps a layer of smog.

These are photocatalytic coatings — special surface coatings that typically contain a material called titanium dioxide (TiO₂). The material has been studied for photocatalytic applications since at least the 1980s, including self-cleaning surfaces and pollution control.

The idea is simple: use sunlight to trigger a chemical reaction on a painted or coated surface, allowing it to break down certain harmful pollutants that come into contact with it.

The concept has already been explored outside India. In the Netherlands, for instance, researchers have tested TiO₂-based coatings and concrete surfaces for reducing nitrogen oxides around roads.

Now, the idea is being studied in Indian conditions too.

In March 2026, the Delhi government signed an MoU with IIT Madras for a study of photocatalytic “smog-eating” surfaces. Researchers are examining whether TiO₂-based coatings on roads, pavements and other surfaces can help reduce pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

So, how does it actually work?

Think of titanium dioxide as a tiny chemical helper that wakes up when light falls on it.

When sunlight hits the TiO₂ in the coating, it provides the energy needed to trigger a photocatalytic reaction. This creates highly reactive particles on the surface. They interact with pollutants in the air, helping oxidise and transform them into less harmful substances.

For nitrogen oxides, for example, the reaction can ultimately convert them into nitrate compounds on the surface. VOCs can also be broken down through similar oxidation reactions.

In simple terms, the coating uses sunlight to turn a normally passive surface into a tiny chemical reaction zone.

That means a road, pavement, wall, or building surface could potentially do more than simply sit there. If enough suitable surface area is exposed to light and air, it could contribute to reducing certain pollutants around it.

Can it really clean Delhi’s air?

This is where the science gets interesting; photocatalytic coatings have shown promising results in laboratory experiments and some real-world demonstrations, but their performance outdoors can vary considerably. 

Sunlight intensity, humidity, temperature, wind, dust, and how long polluted air remains in contact with the surface can all affect the reaction. Reviews of outdoor studies have found widely varying results, which is why researchers recommend testing the technology under specific local conditions.

That is also why the IIT Madras-Delhi government study matters. Researchers plan to test the coatings under different lighting conditions and in Delhi-like pollution environments before assessing how they could be deployed.

And there is an important catch: smog-eating coatings are not meant to replace pollution control at the source.

Reducing vehicle, industrial, construction, and other emissions remains essential. The coating is being explored as an additional tool — one that could make the huge surfaces already surrounding us work a little harder for cleaner air.

So, the next time a wall or road looks like just another grey stretch of the city, imagine it doing something else too: using a little sunlight to help break down some of the pollutants floating around us.

Sources:

'Can Paint Help Tackle Delhi’s Deadly Smog? Discover the Future of Air Purification' by Sleepy Classes IAS.

The doctor says a name you have never heard before, then explains, gently, that it is what your child has. The room goes quiet. Somewhere in the sentence that follows, how rare it is, what it might mean for your child's life, most of it stops making sense.

You nod, and might even ask a question you already know the answer to, just to feel like you are still part of the conversation.

Over 4,001 rare diseases were on record with the Indian Council of Medical Research as of 31 October 2021, and roughly 80% are genetic, which means they disproportionately affect children. 

Reaching that moment alone, the one where a name finally exists for what your child has been going through, can take years of tests and second opinions, a journey several Indian families fighting for treatment access have described as an ordeal in itself. 

What gets spoken about even less is what comes after: how you sit with the news, find the words for your child, prepare their siblings, and explain it to a joint family that will have questions, opinions and sometimes, unhelpful theories of its own. Child psychologists say there is a workable order to get through all of it.

Absorb the shock before you explain it

“The instinct after a diagnosis is to start solving immediately. Researching treatment, calling relatives, booking the next appointment. But we generally advise parents to resist this for the first few days,” explains Kalyani Raman, a Chennai-based child psychologist specialising in family counselling.

She recommends bringing another adult to follow-up appointments to take notes, since it is common to mishear or forget details while absorbing distressing news. Kalyani's wider point, that most families eventually find a new equilibrium, is worth holding onto early, because the first days rarely feel like equilibrium at all. 

In India, that adjustment is often complicated by how long it took to get an answer, since general physicians are usually the first point of contact and rare conditions sit outside their usual training. 

“By the time a family has a name for what their child has, they may already be running on empty, which makes the urge to problem-solve immediately even stronger, and even more worth pausing,” she explains.

Match the words to your child's age

Ritu Burman, a former family counsellor in Mumbai, advises starting any conversation with a child by asking what they already understand, since children often absorb more than adults assume from overheard conversations and hospital visits. 

Her guidance, developed for talking to children about a loved one's illness, applies directly to a child's own diagnosis too: keep language concrete, avoid euphemisms that can confuse or frighten, and let the child's questions set the pace instead of delivering everything at once. 

“Parents should show their own coping rather than hiding it, since visible composure paired with honest emotion teaches a child that difficult feelings are survivable. For younger children, this can mean describing the condition through changes in daily life, medicines, appointments, what they can still do, rather than through a label they cannot yet process,” she says. 

Her guidance for families managing a chronic diagnosis adds one more point: “reassure a child that nothing they did caused the condition, since children commonly and wrongly blame themselves.”

Prepare siblings too

A diagnosis rarely affects one child alone. Kalyani cautions parents against loosening routines or expectations for the child's siblings once a diagnosis arrives, since maintaining the same structure and boundaries across the household protects everyone's sense of stability. 

“Siblings often carry a quieter version of the same fear and guilt their parents feel, wondering whether they somehow caused the condition or why their brother or sister was affected and they were not. Giving siblings small, age-appropriate ways to help, learning a caregiving task, or simply being told what is happening before they overhear it, tends to ease that guilt more than shielding them from it does,” she tells The Better India.

Occasional one-on-one time with each sibling, away from hospital routines, does more for a child's sense of security than repeated reassurances.

Decide the family script before anyone else does

Extended family in India is rarely a background presence, and a rare diagnosis is often filtered through outdated ideas about consanguinity, blame or fate. 

Psychologist Shanmathi Shankaran suggests that, “Parents would benefit from agreeing on one simple explanation before the news spreads informally, so grandparents, in-laws and neighbours hear the same version rather than a rumour that grows more alarming with each retelling.” 

This script needs no medical detail. It needs to state what the condition is, what it is not, and what the family needs from people around them, whether that is patience, practical help or fewer questions. 

“Families who have gone public with a child's rare diagnosis in India have also had to push back against mental health stigma and unsolicited home remedies, adding exhaustion on top of the medical demands,” she explains. Naming that in advance, and deciding in advance who in the family fields which questions, takes some of that weight off the parents alone.

Build the support system around the diagnosis

None of this is meant to happen unaided. Genetic counselling, still scarce outside major Indian cities, gives parents a structured space to process both the medical facts and the emotional fallout, including guilt that has no basis in anything they did. 

“Support groups, whether run by disease-specific patient associations or broader parent networks for children with special needs, offer something a clinic cannot, which is other families who have already lived through this exact day,” says Kalyani.

Psychologists also recommend looping in the child's medical team early, since many hospitals have social workers or child life specialists trained to help families navigate this period, not just the child's treatment. 

What psychologists consistently report is that the crisis phase passes. Most parents, given time, information and a support system that includes their own extended family, find a working rhythm again, even when the diagnosis itself does not change.

15 wrestlers. One state. All from Haryana. So, what makes Haryana India’s wrestling powerhouse?

For generations, wrestling has been part of Haryana’s culture, with traditional kushti and akharas helping young athletes get into the sport early. Over time, the state also embraced mat wrestling, creating a strong ecosystem for athletes to train and compete.

Olympic champions like Sushil Kumar, Yogeshwar Dutt and Sakshi Malik helped make wrestling a bigger dream for young athletes across the state. Today, wrestlers from different parts of India also come to Haryana to train.

Because in Haryana, one champion doesn’t just win a medal. Their journey can inspire the next generation to step onto the mat.

#HaryanaWrestling #IndianWrestling #AsianGames2026 #Kushti #IndianSports #WrestlingIndia #Haryana #WrestlingChampions

“I did not like going to school. The teachers taught us, but sometimes they also scolded and hit us. I never really felt interested in learning,” recalls nine-year-old Jamna Prasad.

Growing up in Bankhedi village in Madhya Pradesh, school was never a place he looked forward to. With teachers juggling several classes at once, asking questions or learning at his own pace was rarely possible.

Today, the Class 5 student eagerly waits for his turn with a tablet that teaches through games. He can now read the alphabet, solve addition and subtraction, and dreams of wearing a police uniform one day.

“I enjoy learning with my friends,” he says. “The Monkey Game is my favourite. Now I understand my studies much better.”

Across six districts of Madhya Pradesh, children who struggled with basic lessons are beginning to learn differently. Behind the change is 32-year-old Shruti Shrivastava, who once imagined serving from inside a government office.

Today, as founder-director of Sashaktikaran Foundation, she oversees Project Neev, which has reached around 900 children across 10 government schools and nine residential hostels, while creating livelihoods for 30 rural women as Shiksha Saathis.

Looking back, she says her purpose did not change. Only the path did.

When the IAS dream came to an end 

Shruti grew up across several towns in Madhya Pradesh because of her parents’ transferable government jobs, exposing her early to inequalities in education and opportunity.

“I’ve always been a compassionate person. As a child, I began noticing the inequalities around me. Seeing children miss out on quality education only because their parents couldn’t afford it, and watching women constantly held back by stereotypes and prejudice, made me realise I wanted to do something to change that,” she tells The Better India.

She studied philosophy at Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi and then spent years preparing for the Civil Services Examination. “For me, becoming a civil servant was never the final dream,” she says. “It was the path towards the larger goal of working with society and for society.”

Across six attempts, she cleared four preliminary examinations and reached the interview stage once. On 16 April 2024, the UPSC results ended a dream she had carried for nearly a decade.

“The UPSC journey ended the day my years-long dream shattered. For the next few weeks, I was trying to hold myself together and come to terms with the fact that the life I had imagined for so many years was no longer going to happen,” she recalls.

She spent May and June recovering and deciding what came next. “Restarting life at the age of 30 wasn’t easy. I was nervous because I was beginning from scratch.”

Yet the larger goal had always been social change. She began to see that there might be another route to it.

A foundation that needed a second beginning

At the same time, Sashaktikaran Foundation in Jaipur was preparing to shut down. Shruti’s college batchmate and close friend Mrinalika Rathore had founded it on 8 March 2017, working with children in low-income schools through Project Parivartan.

Mrinalika later cleared the Civil Services Examination and joined the Odisha cadre as an IAS officer. Government service meant stepping away from the organisation, and there was no obvious successor.

Shruti had known the foundation from the beginning and supported its work informally. When Mrinalika offered her the chance to take over in July 2024, it also brought back a conversation the two friends had once had.

“It was emotional in many ways because she isn’t just a friend; she is someone whose values closely match mine. We had spoken about how she would work from within the government while I would continue working outside it, so taking over the foundation felt like continuing a shared vision,” Shruti explains.

“At that point, I needed momentum,” she says. “She handed me something that already had a strong foundation. It gave me the courage to begin again.”

Her sister Smriti joined as co-director, bringing her design background to communications and organisational development. They also met Adarsh Mohandas, an education professional with nearly a decade of development-sector experience.

“Because of my UPSC preparation, I had become a generalist. I understood the issues well, but I also knew I needed someone with technical expertise in education to build a programme that could create real impact,” Shruti says.

Adarsh brought the idea that became Project Neev. As co-founder and programme director, he leads implementation on the ground, while Shruti focuses on strategy, fundraising and organisational development.

One teacher, five grades and very little time 

By September 2024, the team was travelling through villages, meeting parents, teachers, women and children, and observing classrooms.

A pattern emerged. In many schools, one or two teachers managed five grades. Classes 1, 2 and 3 often sat together, while Classes 4 and 5 shared another room, leaving little time to understand every child’s learning level.

“When I first began visiting these schools, I realised teachers were doing everything they possibly could,” Shruti says. “The challenge was not a lack of commitment. It was a lack of time, resources and infrastructure.”

Project Neev was officially launched in October 2024, with work on the ground beginning on 14 November. The idea was to strengthen government schools from within, rather than create a parallel system.

“Government schools educate the majority of rural children, so creating another system may help a few, but strengthening the existing public system is what creates lasting change,” she says.

That meant working alongside teachers and training women from the same villages as learning facilitators.

What learning at your own pace looks like

Each day, batches of five children step out of class for a 30-minute learning session with a Shiksha Saathi. Each child uses a tablet and logs into an individual profile on Chimple, an application developed by Sutara Foundation.

One child may be identifying letters while another reads sentences and a third practises subtraction. The app resumes from where each child stopped the previous day.

“That is the biggest difference,” Shruti explains. “In a classroom with multiple grades sitting together, it is impossible for one teacher to personalise learning for every child. Through this project, each child learns according to their own level rather than according to their age or class.”

The activities use puzzles, sounds, colourful characters and exercises that advance only after a child understands a concept. Afterwards, they write in notebooks while the facilitator observes their progress.

At the end of each session, two streams of information reach the foundation’s Bhopal office: learning data generated by the app and weekly observations from Shiksha Saathis on each child’s confidence, participation and understanding.

“Technology tells us what a child has completed,” Shruti says. “Our Shiksha Saathis tell us how that child learnt. Both are equally important because education is not only about numbers.”

The cycle runs five times a day. While one batch learns with a Shiksha Saathi, the teacher can give the remaining students more attention. Participating children get 30 minutes of focused learning without interrupting regular teaching. A similar model runs after school in government residential hostels, including those in Bankhedi, Podhar, Choorna and Narmadapuram.

The women leading those classrooms

Project Neev depends on women from the communities it serves. Some had never travelled outside their district alone; others had stopped studying because further education was unaffordable.

Shruti deliberately did not make graduation compulsory.

“We were not looking for teachers,” she says. “We were looking for women who had the potential to become facilitators. We wanted to create opportunities for women who had capability but not necessarily degrees.”

Applicants are tested in basic Hindi, English, mathematics, communication and aptitude, followed by group discussions, interviews, orientation and continuous training. Field coordinators mentor them monthly, and an annual three-day residential retreat brings the Shiksha Saathis together.

For 22-year-old Chhaya Raja of Jatauwa village, the role reopened a future she had almost given up on.

“From Class 6 onwards, I used to hide from my father and go to school,” she says. “I somehow completed Class 12, but I could not continue because college meant more money and travelling.”

When she reached the recruitment drive in November 2024, nearly 30 women were already waiting. “I almost turned back,” she remembers with a laugh. “I thought there was no chance I would be selected. But someone from the team encouraged me to stay and attempt the test.”

She finished with the highest score.

Today, she manages learning sessions, speaks with teachers and parents, and recently addressed more than 200 people at the foundation’s annual celebration.

“The biggest change has been my confidence. Earlier, I hardly stepped out of my house, but now people recognise me because of my work. I was even able to save enough money to buy a motorbike for my family,” she says.

Savita Ahirwar from Bankhedi joined Project Neev in August 2025. Her father, now around 80, could no longer work, and the family depended largely on pensions. Despite a physical disability affecting her legs, she works with children while continuing her studies.

“Earlier, I was hesitant and struggled to express myself, but now I can confidently speak in front of people. My salary helps pay for my parents’ medicines, and it has also allowed me to continue my own studies,” she says.

Other Shiksha Saathis have used their earnings to repair a village well, buy a scooter or purchase a motorcycle for a parent.

“Whenever I meet them, I remind them they are not beneficiaries,” Shruti says. “They are changemakers. They are the ones improving education in their villages.”

When children stop believing they are ‘bad at studies’

Shruti remembers one child who stopped attending school because he could not read and felt like a failure. His Shiksha Saathi began visiting him after school, helping him learn without pressure and gradually encouraging him to return.

“Now he comes to school happily because he feels he can actually learn,” she says. “That change in confidence is difficult to measure, but it matters more than any statistic.”

Of the roughly 900 children who have participated, 291 improved by at least one learning level in Hindi, 327 progressed in English, and 355 advanced by one or more levels in mathematics, with some moving up by as many as three levels.

Children who attend regularly have shown learning growth ranging from 70 to 200 percent, according to the foundation.

“We are trying to create lifelong learners,” Shruti says. “The future will keep changing. Jobs will keep changing. If children know how to teach themselves, they will always be able to adapt.”

‘We don’t want to touch lives briefly and move on’

When Sashaktikaran Foundation restarted in July 2024, Shruti’s parents supported it financially before donations arrived. Since then, nearly 200 individual donors have contributed.

“People often ask how we built that trust, and the answer is easy. We remained transparent, shared stories, photographs and updates from the field, and wanted every donor to know exactly which child they were helping,” she says.

The organisation also works with Madhya Pradesh’s Departments of Education, Tribal Affairs and Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Communities. It hopes to expand carefully, while developing initiatives around women’s livelihoods and children from denotified and nomadic communities.

“We don’t want to touch lives briefly and move on,” Shruti says. “We want depth. We want longevity. We want children to become confident, critical thinkers and self-learners, and we want women to become leaders in their own communities.”

Then comes a line that captures how she now sees the work: “In an ideal India, organisations like ours shouldn’t be needed at all.”

Years ago, Shruti believed she could serve the country only after clearing one of its toughest examinations. Today, that idea has changed.

In classrooms across Madhya Pradesh, public service looks like five children around a table, each learning at their own pace, with a woman from their village beside them, helping them believe they can learn.

All pictures courtesy Shruti Shrivastava.

For a farmer, a field of paddy or sugarcane is months of work standing in one place. If elephants enter and damage the crop, a season’s income can disappear with it.

For an elephant moving through the Terai, the same field looks very different. Paddy, maize and sugarcane are all food, and they offer plenty of energy in a relatively small area.

This overlap between what a farmer depends on and what an elephant wants to eat lies at the centre of a difficult question: how do you protect livelihoods in a landscape elephants continue to use?

Fences are one answer. In parts of Uttar Pradesh’s Terai Elephant Reserve, farmers and conservationists are also trying something else.

They are looking at what grows inside the field.

The crop drawing attention is turmeric, which elephants are less attracted to than paddy, maize or sugarcane. Farmers are being encouraged to grow it alongside, or in place of some of, the crops that are more vulnerable to elephant damage.

The idea makes sense only if it works for the farmer too. Turmeric has to grow well, cost less to cultivate and find a market that pays enough to make the shift worthwhile.

That is where this experiment begins.

Why are elephants choosing farms over forests?

The Terai Elephant Reserve was notified in December 2022 and covers more than 3,000 sq km across the Dudhwa-Pilibhit landscape. It includes forest areas associated with Dudhwa, Pilibhit, Katarniaghat and Kishanpur. Government sources put Uttar Pradesh’s elephant population at about 232.

The reserve also borders Nepal, and elephants move across the international boundary. Their route, however, does not run through one continuous stretch of forest. Farms form part of this landscape too.

For an elephant, many of the crops growing there are familiar kinds of food.

“Sugarcane is a species of grass. Paddy, wheat and maize are grasses too. So, from an elephant’s perspective, they are all food,” explains Dr Aritra Kshettry, National Lead-Elephant Conservation at WWF-India.

Cultivated crops have another advantage. They pack a considerable amount of energy into one place.

“Nutritionally, these crops have been selectively bred by humans for thousands of years to maximise carbohydrates, which means they are a rich source of energy,” says Kshettry.

In a forest, getting the same amount of energy takes much longer.

“To get the same amount of energy, elephants would have to forage for up to 12 to 14 hours a day in the forest, feeding on bits of grass and trees,” he explains. “They can get the same energy in a couple of hours by feeding on paddy, sugarcane or maize.”

Seen from the elephant’s side, a cultivated field can therefore be difficult to pass up.

“From an energy point of view, it makes more sense for elephants to feed on crops,” says Kshettry. “But croplands also have costs.”

Those costs include people, roads, electricity infrastructure and other hazards. An easy source of food can also bring elephants into situations that are dangerous for both the animals and the people living around them.

The challenge has become more pressing as elephant movement in this part of the Terai has changed.

When seasonal visitors began staying year-round

According to Kshettry, elephants were once seasonal visitors to the landscape. In 1991, that pattern began to shift.

“1991 was the first year Dudhwa had elephants throughout the year. There were about 45 elephants,” he says.

Over time, elephants began spending longer periods on the Indian side and expanding their range.

“In the lived memory of people in this landscape, elephants are a fairly recent entry, unlike tigers and leopards, which have always been there,” says Kshettry.

That matters to the people farming here. Elephant presence through more of the year means that the animals and agricultural fields cross paths more often.

WWF-India profiled elephant-related crop loss alongside other challenges faced by farmers across the Terai Elephant Reserve. Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary emerged as a particular hotspot, with elephants present almost every year.

The farming calendar adds another layer to the problem. Some farmers grow sugarcane throughout the year. Others grow two crops, such as wheat followed by maize, or wheat and paddy.

As one crop is harvested, another may be growing. For elephants moving through the area, food can therefore be available across different seasons.

It was while looking at these patterns that an existing crop began to stand out.

What was different about the turmeric?

Some farmers in Katarniaghat were already growing turmeric. Elephants did not appear to be drawn to it in the same way they were to paddy, maize or sugarcane.

For farmers dealing with repeated crop damage, that difference opened up an interesting possibility.

“So our supposition was: what if we could increase the revenue from turmeric by adopting better agronomic practices and more climate-resilient, high-yielding varieties?” says Kshettry.

Farmers would not have to abandon food crops altogether. If turmeric could bring in enough money, income from it could help absorb losses when elephants damaged other crops.

“The increased revenue these farmers get from turmeric will help offset the losses they inevitably face with food crops,” he explains.

The programme began with around 10 progressive farmers. WWF-India’s agriculture team then worked with about 70 farmers on improving the way turmeric was cultivated. The focus was practical: increase yields, use less water and reduce input costs.

“That has been our initial intervention for the last two years: introducing better agronomic practices for turmeric to get a higher yield,” says Kshettry.

Around 100 farmers have since been trained in improved turmeric cultivation, according to WWF-India. The organisation says yields increased by 85% in one year.

A heartwarming sight of Asian Elephant calves enjoying a hearty mudbath under the vigil eyes of mum, aunts,& other in Dudhwa N.P. The calves imitate every action of their elders unconcerned about any danger. It helps them cool off & get rid of ticks.@DudhwaTR @rameshpandeyifs pic.twitter.com/Vlu2Jltz61

— Sanjay Kumar IAS (@skumarias02) September 15, 2026

A larger harvest, however, brings its own practical concern. Farmers still need somewhere to sell it.

A good crop is no use if nobody buys it

A field of turmeric that elephants leave alone is useful only if the farmer can make a reasonable income from it.

If production rises without reliable buyers, farmers are left with a different problem. So the work has begun moving beyond cultivation and into what happens after the turmeric leaves the field.

“The yield has to go somewhere. So currently, we are building the value chain through farmer producer organisations, which will aggregate the farmers’ produce and sell the turmeric to a procurer,” says Kshettry.

Farmer producer organisations can bring together produce from several farmers and connect them with larger buyers.

One buyer is being developed around organic production. Farmers would need to follow organic practices for several years before their turmeric could qualify for organic certification and command a premium.

Another buyer is expected to work with the farmer producer organisations on processing and packaging.

These steps matter because a farmer’s earnings depend on what happens after harvest too. Drying, processing and packaging can influence how much value eventually comes back to the person who grew the crop.

According to WWF-India, the Forest Department has committed funds towards a turmeric processing and drying unit in the region.

The success of crop diversification will ultimately depend on this full chain. Farmers need a crop elephants are less likely to damage, but they also need that crop to make economic sense.

That raises another question farmers living with elephants often face. Why go through the trouble of changing crops when a fence could simply keep the animals outside?

So, why not just put up fences?

Fencing can help in certain places, particularly where a dense human settlement meets an area used by wildlife and there is a clear boundary that needs protection.

Kshettry’s concern is what happens when fences are placed within a larger landscape of forests and farms through which elephants already move.

“Fencing, I think, has been abused in India,” he says.

“If you put fences in a mosaic of forests and farms, you restrict wildlife movement and divert it elsewhere.”

The effect can be easy to miss when looking at a single farm. An elephant stopped by one fence still has to find another way through.

“If you put up a fence around your farm and it lies along a corridor or on flat land, you may expose your neighbour’s farm to these elephants,” says Kshettry. “So there are spillover effects.”

Protecting one plot can therefore push the problem towards another.

That is why the work in Katarniaghat extends beyond turmeric fields. If elephants will continue to move through this landscape, people also need ways to know when they are nearby and respond before an encounter becomes dangerous.

An early warning can make a difference

The programme has supported 150 Gaj Mitra (elephant-friend) volunteers working across 20 teams. Around 1,600 community members and other stakeholders have also received training in managing human-elephant conflict.

Technology has become part of that response. AI-enabled cameras have generated more than 650 automated alerts about elephant presence for communities and Forest Department response teams.

An alert cannot stop an elephant from moving, but advance warning gives people and response teams more time to react when one is nearby.

Alongside this community response, ecological monitoring is helping teams understand the animals and the landscape better. More than 50 wild Asian elephants have been individually identified and profiled.

Vegetation surveys across 220 plots have also recorded hundreds of plant species and more than 18,000 field data points.

Each of these pieces addresses a different part of the same problem: what are elephants eating, where are they moving, when are they approaching farms, and what can reduce the losses when people and animals use the same landscape?

The answers will not remain fixed.

“These are very dynamic systems, and what works today might not work tomorrow. What works in one location might not work in another,” says Kshettry.

That uncertainty is also why turmeric is being tested as one part of a wider approach.

How much can one crop change?

There are encouraging signs from Katarniaghat.

Between 2021 and 2025, the area of crops damaged by elephants fell by 86%, according to WWF-India. The number of crop-damage incidents declined by 47% over the same period.

Those figures sit alongside the work on turmeric, early-warning systems, community response and ecological monitoring. No single intervention can take credit for solving a conflict shaped by animal movement, farming choices, rainfall and changing habitat conditions.

For the farmer standing in a field, however, the question remains much simpler.

Can this land continue to provide an income without losing so much of what grows on it to elephants?

Turmeric offers one possibility. If farmers can grow it productively, find reliable buyers and earn enough from it, a crop that elephants largely avoid could make farming in this landscape a little less vulnerable.

The elephants, meanwhile, will continue to move.

The experiment in the Terai starts from that reality and asks what can change around it. Sometimes, that change may begin with something as ordinary as deciding what to plant.

This story is part of a content series by The Better India and WWF-India.

For a city built around lakes, Bengaluru has spent years trying to answer: how do you bring a lake back?

The answer usually lies with the physical things that are easiest to see: remove the silt, repair the bund, clear the weeds, fix the feeder channel, and make the edges accessible.

Now, Karnataka is preparing to do this at scale.

The state has drawn up a Rs 150-crore plan to rejuvenate 500 lakes across seven water-stressed districts, PTI reported on 22 September 2026. Of these, 135 are in Bengaluru Urban and Bengaluru Rural. 

The proposed works include desilting, strengthening and raising bunds, repairing canals and feeder channels, and beautification. The project is planned with World Bank assistance.

The 500 lakes are spread across Bengaluru Rural (68), Bengaluru Urban (67), Bidar (44), Chikkaballapur (90), Kalaburagi (49), Tumakuru (96) and Kolar (86).

But Bengaluru’s experience with its restored lakes suggests that bringing back water is only one part of bringing back a lake.

So, what should a healthy urban lake actually look like?

There are at least three tests.

The first test: What enters the lake?

Stand beside a Bengaluru lake, and the first thing to ask is: what is flowing into it?

Historically, Bengaluru’s lakes formed a connected cascade. Water moved from one tank to another across the city’s natural terrain. The World Bank’s 2025 technical assessment of the Karnataka Water Security and Resilience Programme describes the remaining lake network as having the potential to help the city manage both floods and droughts.

But that function depends on the quality and quantity of water entering the system.

Sewage is one of the biggest complications.

⚠️ North Bengaluru: Historical Doddagubbi Lake is overflowing after a massive 138.5 mm hit the area!

Horamavu - 99 mm
Jakkur - 83 mm
Yelahanka - 78 mm

🌊 Waterlogging is severe at Kannuru Junction, heavily stalling traffic heading toward Bagaluru Road and Hennur.… pic.twitter.com/qmylvQfyYN

— Naveen Reddy (@navin_ankampali) October 1, 2026

A 2026 study published in Frontiers in Water examined eight urban lakes in Bengaluru and looked at different ways of dealing with wastewater entering them. The researchers found that diversion channels could improve water quality within a lake by keeping wastewater out. But there was a catch: the pollution does not disappear because it has been diverted.

Wastewater can be pushed downstream, potentially affecting fisheries, groundwater recharge and flood regulation.

The researchers therefore identified effective wastewater treatment as the preferred solution, while also pointing to constructed wetlands and other local interventions that can support biodiversity and ecosystem services.

This matters for the 135 Bengaluru lakes on the revival list because a lake can be desilted and its bund repaired, yet remain under pressure if sewage continues to enter it.

So the first sign of a healthy lake is not simply that it has water. It is that the water coming into it is being managed.

The second test: What happens inside the water?

A lake can look different after restoration without becoming ecologically healthy.

The shoreline may be cleaner. But what is happening beneath the surface?

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science have assessed Bengaluru’s lakes using parameters including dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, nutrients and temperature, alongside biological indicators.

In one assessment of restored lakes, the researchers found that only Jakkur, Devasandra 1, Ullal and Handrahalli recorded good water quality under their Water Quality Index assessment. Several other restored lakes remained in poor or very poor categories, with continuing sewage inputs identified as one of the problems.

This points to a distinction that is easy to lose when lake restoration becomes a civil-engineering exercise.

Restoration is not the same as construction.

IISc researchers have cautioned against approaches centred on what they describe as a “cement bowl”, where natural vegetation and wetlands around the lake are removed in favour of hard surfaces.

That vegetation is not merely decoration.

Riparian plants can absorb nutrients and provide breeding and feeding habitat for birds, insects and other organisms. Wetlands can also play a role in filtering water before it reaches the main lake.

Which brings us to the next big question: if the lake has been restored, what has returned to it?

The third test: What comes back?

A healthy lake should support life.

That makes birds, insects, aquatic organisms and native vegetation more than pleasant additions to the landscape. They can provide clues about what is happening inside the ecosystem.

IISc researchers studying Bengaluru’s wetlands have examined biological communities including diatoms, molluscs, aquatic insects, butterflies and birds alongside water-quality parameters. Their work has shown associations between water quality and the organisms found in these wetlands, with pollution-tolerant species more likely to persist in heavily contaminated waters.

Recent rains washed plastic into #DoddakallsandraLake—a recurring issue across #Bengaluru lakes. This breaks down into #Microplastics, polluting lakes & threatening groundwater.@RLR_BTM Sir, request you to direct @karnatakakspcb to act against lake pollution in #Bengaluru. https://t.co/Rtik0auezC pic.twitter.com/4gG9xP4FQN

— LakeEcosystem (@EcosystemLake) September 19, 2026

There are also examples where restoration has been accompanied by measurable ecological changes.

At Venkateshpura Lake, ATREE’s restoration work combined water-quality monitoring with native vegetation, floating islands, habitat creation, and aeration. ATREE reported that average dissolved oxygen increased from 1.74 mg/L to more than 5 mg/L after submersible aerators were deployed.

The lake also recorded the return of species including the Pied Kingfisher and Oriental Darter, along with butterflies and amphibians.

The return of a fish-eating bird such as the Pied Kingfisher can indicate that the lake is supporting the food chain the bird depends on. In other words, the lake is beginning to function as an ecosystem rather than simply holding water.

So, what does “healthy” mean?

A healthy urban lake should have cleaner inflows, functioning feeder channels, adequate dissolved oxygen, functioning wetlands and native vegetation, aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity, and a connection with the wider water system.

It should be able to store water, slow runoff, support groundwater recharge and provide habitat.

That does not make desilting, bund repairs or channel restoration unimportant. These can be necessary parts of lake management.

But research from Bengaluru suggests they are only part of the job. The real test will come when the rains return.

Sources

‘K'taka govt to rejuvenate 500 lakes at Rs 150 crore: Minister Khandre’: By PTI, Published on 22 September 2026

‘Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)’: Annual report 2024-25

‘Efficacy Of Rejuvenation Of Lakes In Bengaluru, India’: By Ramachandra T.V A, Sincy Va, Asulabha K.S, Published On 18 July 2020

‘Evaluating the effectiveness of inlet-focused interventions on the water quality and ecosystem services of urban lakes in the tropics’: By Sumita Bhattacharyya, Priyanka Jamwal, Laurence Carvalho, Published on

A coconut shell is usually the last thing we think about after cracking open a coconut. Once the water and flesh are removed, the hard shell is often discarded or burned.

But across India, startups are looking at such leftovers differently.

From coconut shells and husks to rice husk and the ash left behind after burning it, agricultural waste is being turned into everything from kitchenware and gardening products to furniture panels and industrial materials.

The idea is simple: instead of treating farm waste as something to be thrown away, can it become the raw material for something useful?

Here are four Indian startups finding innovative ways to give agricultural waste a second life.

1. Thenga Coco: Giving discarded coconut shells a new life

In Kerala, where coconuts are part of everyday life, Maria Kuriakose noticed the potential in something most people simply discarded.

In 2019, she started Thenga Coco as a small backyard experiment to turn discarded coconut shells into useful, handcrafted products.

Today, the women-led startup sources shells from local coconut oil mills and temples and transforms them into bowls, spoons, soap dishes, teacups, salad bowls, smoothie bowls, planters and candle holders.

The shells are polished with coconut oil instead of chemical varnishes, keeping the products natural and suitable for everyday use.

There is also a livelihood story behind the products. Thenga Coco works with local artisans, particularly women in rural Kerala, many of whom can work flexibly from home.

So, what begins as a discarded coconut shell can become a kitchen product, a home accessory and a source of income.

2. Global Green Coir: Turning coconut husks into a growing medium

The shell isn't the only part of a coconut that can be put to use.

After the fibre is extracted from a coconut husk, a fine material called coir pith or cocopeat remains. Instead of treating this leftover as waste, Chennai-based Global Green Coir turns it into products used by farmers and gardeners.

Founded by biotechnologist Anees Ahmed in 2014, the company processes coconut husks into cocopeat blocks, bricks, discs, grow bags and coir pots.

Cocopeat can act as a soil-free growing medium and is used in greenhouses, hydroponics, nurseries, landscaping and home gardening.

The company operates manufacturing units across coconut-growing regions of Tamil Nadu and exports its products to markets around the world.

In other words, a material once left behind during coconut processing can now help grow the next crop.

3. Indowud NFC: When rice husk becomes a building material

What happens when agricultural waste doesn't go back into the soil, but into our homes instead?

Indowud NFC is using agricultural waste such as rice husk to make natural fibre composite panels that can be used as an alternative to conventional wood-based boards.

The panels are made using pulverised agricultural husks, minerals and polymer binders, without harvested wood fibres.

They can be used for furniture, cabinetry, wall panelling, doors, frames, decking and decorative screens. The material is designed to be waterproof, termite-resistant and weather-resistant, making it suitable for both indoor and outdoor applications.

It can also be cut, drilled, screwed, and CNC-routed using standard carpentry tools.

So, instead of rice husk ending its journey as agricultural waste, it can become part of a cupboard, wall or piece of furniture.

4. Brisil Technologies: Turning rice husk ash into industrial material

And even after rice husk has been used as fuel, there can still be value left behind.

Vadodara-based Brisil Technologies, founded by Tanmay Pandya and Reshma Pandya in 2016, works with rice husk ash, the residue generated when rice husks are burned.

The startup has developed a process to extract high-purity silica from this ash. The material can then be used across industries, including tyres, rubber products, footwear, paints and coatings.

Brisil says its process can recover up to 70% silica from rice husk ash. Its commercial-scale plants are also designed to consume around 50 tonnes of biomass waste a day.

One of the applications is tyre manufacturing, where silica can help improve tyre performance and reduce rolling resistance.

From a coconut shell becoming a bowl to rice husk becoming a building panel, these startups are showing that agricultural waste does not necessarily have to be the end of a material's journey.

Sometimes, it can be the beginning of an entirely new one.

Sources:

Global Green Coir

Brisil - Products for better future

Indowud Design Technology

Thenga Coco

He didn’t wait for a team or someone else to take action. At just 19, Kartik Sahani stepped into the Tamsa River to clean it himself.

The river in Mau, Uttar Pradesh, had become filled with waste, even though Kartik’s family farmland depends on it for irrigation. So every day, he spent 3–4 hours in the river, removing waste with his own hands. In just 22 days, he cleared more than 1,000 kg of waste.

Now that the river has been cleaned, Kartik has his eyes on the next challenge: a pond in his neighbourhood. His story is a reminder that change can start with just one person willing to take the first step.

Is there a place in your city that needs someone like Kartik?

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[Kartik Sahani, Kartik Sahani river cleanup, Tamsa River cleanup, Tamsa River Mau, Mau Uttar Pradesh river cleaning, 19 year old river cleaner, 1000 kg waste removed, river cleanup India, youth environmental hero, young environmentalist India, civic sense hero, river pollution Uttar Pradesh, cleaning polluted rivers, waste removal river, youth taking action, clean river India, Bittu Tabahi, another Bittu Tabahi, inspiring Indian youth]

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She doesn’t ask for pity. She asks for acceptance.

Behind every quiet morning and every difficult night is a mother who keeps showing up for her child, even when the world doesn’t always understand.

Preeti isn’t looking for advice or easy answers. Sometimes, she just needs someone to listen, a hand to hold and someone who can be there without trying to fix everything.

Because sometimes, the best support isn’t advice. It’s simply being present.

#Motherhood #ParentingJourney #DisabilityAwareness #emotionalsupport
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The snow is deep, visibility is poor, and somewhere beneath the white expanse could be a soldier buried for hours.

A rescue team moves carefully through the mountains, carrying probes, shovels, beacons and specialised equipment. Every step is deliberate, every minute matters. At high altitude, even reaching the site can be a mission.

When a distress call comes, the team has just five minutes to mobilise.

This is the world of Tiranga Mountain Rescue (TMR), India’s first professional mountain and avalanche rescue organisation. For the past decade, its teams have worked across some of the country’s harshest terrain, often alongside the Indian Army and disaster response agencies.

Since its founding in 2016, TMR has deployed 16 specialised teams across avalanche-prone regions from Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh. Comprising expert mountaineers, former High Altitude Warfare School instructors, ex-servicemen and civilian rescue professionals, they provide round-the-clock support in extreme weather and high-altitude conditions.

So far, TMR’s work has helped save approximately 400 soldiers. But the roots of that mission lie in a rescue of a very different kind — one that began when its founder, Hemant Sachdev, found himself stranded on a mountain and in need of help. 

A fall on Everest changed everything

Hemant Sachdev had always been drawn to the outdoors.

Long before becoming an entrepreneur, he was a climber and hiker. He spent his younger years exploring mountains and went on several expeditions across the Himalayas.

In 2013, he was climbing Everest with three friends. Unlike the large teams that typically attempt the mountain, theirs was a small group.

While crossing the infamous Khumbu Icefall, Hemant encountered a moment that could easily have ended differently.

He was crossing a difficult section over a large crevasse, using two ropes for balance. Suddenly, the rope he was holding snapped.

He fell, but fortunately, he was still secured to the second rope. He found himself dangling over the crevasse, wondering how long it would hold under his weight and backpack.

Then his friend, a professional rescuer, turned back, reached him and pulled him out. There was little time to process what had happened. On Everest, there is no luxury of stopping to think about what could have gone wrong; you steady yourself and keep moving.

Hemant did exactly that.

A week later, on 19 May, he stood on the summit with his friends. They had reached early, and for nearly half an hour, the four of them were alone at the top.

After two months of climbing, the stillness finally gave him a moment to reflect. His mind went back to the crevasse, the broken rope and the friend who had known exactly what to do when everything went wrong.

“If you don't have a great structure or a good sense of very skilled people to provide you safety, to ensure your safety, then you can never really achieve great heights,” he recalls.

He did not know it then, but that thought would eventually take him beyond climbing mountains. Three years later, it would become the foundation for Tiranga Mountain Rescue. 

The question that led to Tiranga Mountain Rescue

In January 2016, Hemant was in Delhi when news of a devastating avalanche in Siachen broke.

Ten soldiers had been buried for five days. When they were finally found, nine had died. One was barely alive and passed away two days later.

For Hemant, the tragedy raised a difficult question.

If an ordinary climber like him could be rescued from a dangerous crevasse on Everest, why couldn't soldiers, who spent months in these extreme environments as part of their duty, receive the same specialised support?

“We do it out of passion. They do it out of duty, and are still left to face these circumstances” he says.

Soon after, Hemant met the Northern Army commander and explained how specialised mountain rescue systems worked in other parts of the world. He was asked to prepare a blueprint.

He did that but building such a system for India's mountains meant working around difficult terrain, weather and institutional constraints. More importantly, it meant convincing an organisation that had traditionally shouldered rescue operations itself to work with a civilian specialist team.

Hemant decided to take on the challenge anyway.

“I’ll do this out of my gratitude, service, commitment to the country and to the soldiers,” he recalls.

TMR began as a trust and foundation with just three teams and 15 people.

Today, it has grown into a specialised rescue force with 16 teams. Its rescuers undergo annual training in Europe and are deployed for six months of the year across the Himalayas, visiting more than 200 posts annually.

At each post, the team assesses risks, studies the terrain and trains soldiers in avalanche awareness, mountain survival, search and rescue, terrain assessment and emergency response.

Over the past decade, TMR says it has trained more than 20,000 Army personnel.

The results have been striking. Avalanche-related casualties in the regions where it operates reportedly fell from 38 in 2017 to virtually zero in 2023–24.

The organisation has also formalised its work with the Army through MoUs across the Northern, Eastern and Central Commands, culminating in an agreement with Army Headquarters in September 2024.

Ten years of answering the call

For Pradhuman Singh, Tiranga Mountain Rescue has been a part of his life almost from the beginning.

He joined the organisation in 2016 and, over the past decade, has watched a small team grow into a specialised rescue force working across some of India's toughest mountain terrain. Based in Himachal Pradesh's Kinnaur district, where he runs Scape Edger Camp, Pradhuman has spent years preparing for one thing: the call that can come at any moment.

“We assess the day's requirements — what the rescue information and the specific task are. We ensure we are fully prepared with the necessary equipment for every mission, as one can never predict what might happen; we always maintain a state of readiness.”

And when the message does arrive, there is little time to think.

“When we receive a message, we mobilise for the mission within five minutes,” he says.

That readiness is built long before a rescue begins. Whenever a new training session starts, TMR's teams gather in Manali for three weeks of training at Rohtang Top, where the focus is heavily on endurance. New volunteers are assessed for their equipment-handling and technical skills, but for Pradhuman, surviving and working in the mountains demands something more, – endurance.

“Every rescue is challenging; there is no doubt about that; every single one is difficult. However, the most difficult task within a rescue operation is the evacuation,” he adds.  After searching and detecting the victims (whether they had survived or not) and bringing them back.

Finding someone buried beneath snow is only the first step. The real challenge can often be getting them safely out through steep slopes, unstable snow and unforgiving terrain.

Over the years, technology has become an important part of that work. Along with standard equipment such as beacons, probes and shovels, TMR uses specialised tools like the RACO R9, which can detect people beneath snow through specialised chips, beacons, mobile phones and other electronic devices.

In 2019, during a rescue operation in Tangdhar, the team detected a mobile phone buried beneath four to five feet of snow. During snowfall, rescuers also conduct snow profiling to assess avalanche risks before deciding how an operation should proceed.

But equipment can only take a team so far. The rest comes down to training, experience and the ability to keep going when conditions become increasingly difficult.

For Pradhuman, that has meant spending 10 years learning to read the mountains — and being ready to enter them when others need help. 

The rescues that test everything

In the mountains, speed can mean the difference between finding someone and losing them. But reaching a site can be a challenge in itself, with unpredictable weather, difficult terrain and limited visibility working against rescuers.

Some of TMR’s toughest missions show how much preparation and the ability to act quickly can matter.

In 2022, seven soldiers disappeared near Tawang after being buried in difficult crevasse-avalanche terrain. Army teams searched for nearly 48 to 50 hours but could not determine where they were.

A three-member TMR team was brought in from Sikkim.

Getting there was a mission in itself. The rescuers travelled through multiple helicopter transfers before reaching the site. By then, a much larger Army search operation was already underway. The TMR team began its own assessment of the terrain.

Within four hours, they found all seven soldiers.

Sadly, none had survived. But the team was able to locate, recover and bring them back — giving their families an answer and ensuring the soldiers could be brought home.

Another rescue in Kashmir came down to an even narrower window.

Three soldiers were buried in an avalanche late in the afternoon. By the time TMR’s two rescuers reached the site, the weather had worsened and darkness had set in.

Army teams had already searched for several hours without success and, with night falling, were preparing to call off the operation until morning.

The TMR rescuers chose to continue.

Within an hour, they found all three soldiers, and two of them were alive.

For Hemant, continuing the search that night may have made all the difference. He believes that had the operation been postponed until morning, all three may have died.

"These missions capture what has come to define TMR’s work over the past decade: moving quickly, working alongside the Army and continuing the search even when conditions appear impossible," he says.

That expertise has also taken the organisation beyond avalanche rescues along India’s northern borders. TMR has contributed to major disaster-response operations including the Mount Trishul rescue mission and the Manipur Tupul landslide in 2022, the Sikkim glacial lake outburst floods in 2023, and the Wayanad floods and landslides in 2024.

Each emergency has brought different terrain, challenges and risks. But for Pradhuman, who has spent 10 years answering these calls, one thing remains unchanged: there is no such thing as a routine rescue in the mountains.

There is only the next call, the next climb and the possibility that someone, somewhere, is still waiting to be found.

A mountain rescue system for the future

For Hemant, the biggest achievement isn’t simply the number of lives saved. It is the possibility of building something India did not have before — a professional, civilian-led mountain rescue institution that complements the capabilities of the armed forces.

After a decade with TMR, he says the gratitude of being able to serve soldiers remains one of the feelings he carries most strongly. He also takes satisfaction in seeing the organisation deliver results despite being privately funded, a nonprofit and entirely pro bono in its work for the Army.

TMR has begun working with India’s disaster response ecosystem to build civilian mountain rescue infrastructure, too. Its larger goal for the next decade is ambitious: to expand and professionalise mountain rescue across the Himalayas.

The world’s largest mountain range is home to millions who live, travel and work across its difficult terrain, yet professional mountain rescue infrastructure remains limited.

Hemant wants to change that. For him, the lesson from Everest was never simply about surviving a fall, but what becomes possible when people have the right skills, preparation and support behind them.

A decade after turning that realisation into Tiranga Mountain Rescue, the idea has grown from one climber’s moment of vulnerability into a rescue system standing alongside those who protect India’s frontiers.

Perhaps that is the most powerful lesson the mountains have offered him: sometimes, helping people reach greater heights begins with making sure someone is there to bring them home.

All images courtsey of Tiranga Mountain Rescue team

A plant may look still, but beneath its leaves and stems, it is constantly changing. Roots are extending through the soil, stems are growing towards light, and cells are responding to changes in their surroundings.

The problem, more than a century ago, was that these movements were simply too slow for the human eye to observe.

That is where Indian scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose stepped in.

In the early 20th century, Bose developed the crescograph, an ingenious instrument that could magnify the growth of a plant thousands of times and record movements that were otherwise almost impossible to see. His work opened up a new way of studying plants, allowing scientists to investigate how they responded to light, temperature, chemicals and other stimuli.

How do you record a movement this tiny? 

Plant growth is deceptively slow. In his later work, Bose noted that the average rate of growth could be as little as about 1/100,000 of an inch per second.

At ordinary magnification, researchers could therefore wait for hours before a measurable change became apparent. But over such long periods, factors such as temperature and light could also change, making experiments harder to control.

Bose wanted a way to shorten this observation period.

His answer was the crescograph, a name derived from crescere, meaning “to grow”. The instrument used delicate mechanical and optical arrangements to amplify tiny movements at the growing tip of a plant.

In his high-magnification version, one lever magnified the movement 100 times, while a second lever magnified it another 100 times. Together, they produced a 10,000-fold magnification. The movement could then be recorded as a series of marks, making the plant's growth visible as a measurable pattern rather than something that had to be guessed from observation.

What drew a physicist towards plants? 

Bose, born in Mymensingh on 30 November 1858, was trained as a physicist and had already earned international recognition for his work on electromagnetic waves before turning much of his attention to plants. He worked at Presidency College in Calcutta and later established the Bose Research Institute.

His interest in plants grew from a larger scientific question: whether living and non-living matter might respond to external stimuli in comparable ways.

He began developing sensitive instruments to detect responses in plants, studying species such as Mimosa pudica, whose leaves move when touched, and Desmodium gyrans, known for the rhythmic movement of its leaves. His experiments examined electrical and mechanical responses in plants and how those responses changed under different stimuli.

The crescograph became one of his most striking tools because it addressed a basic scientific limitation: how do you measure a movement that you cannot see?

A machine sensitive enough to watch a plant grow 

Bose continued refining the instrument, eventually developing a magnetic crescograph that reduced some of the problems caused by friction in mechanical systems.

The principle was remarkably sensitive. A tiny movement in the plant could disturb a carefully balanced magnetic system, producing a much larger movement that could be recorded. Bose reported magnifications reaching millions of times with magnetic amplification, allowing extraordinarily small changes in plant growth to be detected.

By 1917, Bose had submitted his work on the high-magnification crescograph to the Royal Society. The research was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in 1919. A contemporary Royal Society record describes the instrument as part of Bose's wider investigations into the growth and movement of plants.

Understanding how plants respond

The significance of the crescograph was not simply that it made a plant appear to grow faster.

It gave scientists a new way to ask questions. Instead of observing a plant only through visible changes, researchers could measure tiny changes in growth and compare how those changes responded to different conditions.

Bose's work helped establish a more quantitative approach to studying plant physiology, alongside his investigations into electrical responses and plant movements.

More than a century later, the principle behind the invention still feels familiar: when something is too small or too slow for our senses, better instruments can reveal what is happening.

Bose's crescograph did exactly that for plants. It turned almost invisible growth into something measurable, recorded and open to scientific investigation.

This story is part of “India Invented This?” — The Better India’s weekly trivia series that uncovers the Indian minds, ideas and innovations behind inventions that have shaped the way we live. From ingenious solutions created by scientists and engineers to technologies developed in response to some of India’s biggest challenges, each story goes beyond the invention to explore the problem it solved, the impact it created and why it still matters today.

Sources:

'Jagadish Chandra Bose', by Britannica

This story is part of The Better India’s new wildlife series, Species in Focus: 52 species. 52 stories. 52 reasons to protect India’s wildlife. One species at a time, the series explores India’s rare, endangered and lesser-known wildlife, their habitats, behaviour, ecological roles and conservation status.

The Himalayan monal, the state bird of Uttarakhand, is calling at higher frequencies in parts of the Himalayas where traffic, tourists, pilgrims and other human activity have made the landscape noisier.

Researchers at Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University recorded 719 monal calls between April 2023 and June 2024, comparing a relatively quiet stretch of Madmaheshwar Valley with the busier Chopta Valley in the Kedarnath Musk Deer Sanctuary.

Published in Behavioural Processes in August 2025, the study by Rajeev Lochan, Dinesh Kumar Sharma and Anand Kumar found that in the noisier landscape, the birds produced calls with higher peak frequencies and slightly longer durations.

The likely reason is that the birds are trying to be heard.

A call helps a bird communicate, find mates and defend its territory. So when that call changes, it is worth paying attention. The finding suggests that human-generated noise is reaching far enough into the monal’s habitat to make the bird alter the way it communicates.

The monal has not moved away. It appears to be changing its voice to cope with a landscape that is getting louder.

And scientists do not yet know what that adjustment could cost the bird.

For a bird adapted to high-altitude forests and alpine landscapes, the changes are happening both around it and, now, in the soundscape through which it communicates.

Two valleys, two soundscapes

To understand how noise was affecting the monal, the researchers listened to it in two very different settings.

Madmaheshwar Valley provided the quieter comparison. The area has relatively little human activity and no road.

Chopta Valley, within the Kedarnath Musk Deer Sanctuary, is more frequently visited. Roads bring vehicles through the landscape, while pilgrims, trekkers, tourists and birdwatchers add to the human presence.

The researchers used directional microphones and passive acoustic monitoring devices, including AudioMoth recorders, to capture the birds’ calls across seasons. The recordings were collected between April 2023 and June 2024, particularly during the morning and evening periods when monals are more vocal.

They analysed 719 calls.

The difference between the two soundscapes showed up in the calls.

Monals in the noisier habitat used higher peak frequencies than those recorded in the relatively undisturbed habitat. The difference was especially pronounced towards the upper end of the birds’ vocal range. The study also found a slight increase in call duration in noisier conditions.

At the median level, the peak frequency in the quieter habitat was around 171 Hz lower than in the noisier habitat.

The pattern was strongest at the upper end of the range: at the 95th quantile, the researchers’ statistical model explained about 73.4% of the variation in peak frequency.

Why would a bird raise its voice?

There is a concept in ecology called acoustic masking.

When background noise overlaps with an animal’s communication signal, it can make that signal harder for another animal to detect. For a bird, that can mean a call travelling less effectively through its habitat.

Photographer captures the flight of the Himalayan monal, known as the “bird of nine colors.”

📸 Aditya Chavan pic.twitter.com/cVL5uqfcXw

— World's Amazing Things (@Hana_b30) August 28, 2026

Human-generated noise from roads, vehicles and other machinery can produce persistent sounds that occupy frequencies used by wildlife.

The monal appears to be responding by shifting its calls towards higher frequencies.

The researchers interpret this as a possible way of reducing the effect of acoustic masking. A slightly longer call could also provide another way of maintaining communication when background noise interferes with the signal.

But there is a distinction between adapting to noise and being unaffected by it.

The study does not establish that the changed calls are reducing the monal’s mating success or affecting its population. It also does not show that the birds will be able to compensate indefinitely for increasing noise.

When noise becomes a habitat problem

For animals that communicate through sound, habitat is more than trees, grass, water and shelter.

In a separate 2025 study published in Scientific Reports, Lochan, Sharma and Kumar examined the species’ future habitat using species-distribution modelling and 5,122 occurrence records. The researchers looked at present conditions and projected habitat suitability under three climate scenarios extending into the future.

The model found that precipitation during the coldest quarter was an important factor in determining habitat suitability. Under one scenario, more than 14% of previously suitable habitat was projected to become unsuitable by 2041–2070. Under another high-emissions scenario, habitat losses were also projected towards the end of the century.

Birding Goals 🦚

Himalayan Monal, watching its territory at Khaliya Top. A phone shot—the very first glimpse I ever had, last year

The chances of spotting one around Munsyari are lower, not because they’re scarce, bt because much of the terrain is rocky and difficult to access pic.twitter.com/rcelEdzWb9

— Saurabh🦚 (@monal_2111) September 28, 2026

The monal occupies alpine and subalpine areas, oak-mixed forests, rhododendron vegetation and steep mountain slopes, generally between about 2,400 and 4,500 metres. Climate change, land-use change, infrastructure and tourism can all alter these environments.

The bird is currently classified as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. But conservation status at the global level does not capture every change taking place within individual habitats.

Listening to the Himalayas

The researchers’ work also leaves several questions for future studies: whether the altered calls affect mate attraction, whether prolonged exposure creates behavioural or physiological costs, and whether other Himalayan birds are making similar adjustments.

Source:

'Noise-induced vocal shifts in the Himalayan Monal (Lophophorus impejanus) vocal distribution in two different habitats': By Rajeev Lochan, Dinesh Kumar Sharma, Anand Kumar, Published on 8 July 2025

A patch of land sits right in the middle of a picturesque background — snow-capped mountains, tiny homes and clean air. The land is green, tidy, and has boxes placed every two metres. At first, anybody would wonder what is in these boxes. Let’s find out…

In Badsar village in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, bees are shaping something far larger than honey. In fields lined with native flora and homes that still echo older ways of living, a group of beekeepers, farmers and women artisans are rebuilding a relationship that once came naturally to the region.

Tenacious Bee Collective, started in 2018 by a group of nature-loving friends, is working to revive traditional beekeeping practices in the state.

While pesticide-heavy agriculture, climate stress, and falling honey prices are pushing beekeepers out of the profession, Tenacious Bee’s work rests on a simple idea: ecological restoration and rural livelihoods can grow together when built from within the community.

This raises a key question of whether beekeeping can remain a viable rural livelihood without adopting the industrial practices that have contributed to the pressures facing small beekeepers and bee populations.

When beekeeping began to fade

For generations, beekeeping in Himachal Pradesh was woven into everyday life. Practices like maintaining ‘dhalooni’, small niches built into the walls of mud-and-stone homes, allowed bees to coexist with people. Honey gathering followed a seasonal pace, shaped by local flora and an understanding of the surroundings.

Over time, this relationship began to weaken. Low honey returns made it difficult for beekeepers to sustain their work. As concrete structures replaced traditional homes, even the physical spaces that once supported bees began to disappear.

What followed was a gradual decline not just in bee populations, but also in the knowledge systems that sustained them.

Tenacious Bee Collective began its work within this reality, not by introducing something entirely new, but by returning to existing practices and reworking them for the present.

“Caring for bees is essential because they sustain us in return. At Tenacious Bee, the team practises ethical beekeeping across the Himalayas, harvesting only 20 to 30 per cent of the honey while leaving the rest for the bees as winter sustenance,” explains Aditya Singh, Experience and Operations Manager at Tenacious Bee Collective.

Alongside this, they run a village-based workshop where local women craft products such as beeswax lip balms and candles. These handmade goods are then packaged and shipped to customers across India.

Building a women-centred community-based model

Instead of centralising production, Tenacious Bee has focused on building a decentralised, community-led model. Their work begins with people such as small-scale farmers, local beekeepers and women in the village. Today, 45+ beekeepers work with them across their network.

Through training programmes, community members learn ethical beekeeping practices that prioritise the health of bees and their habitats. The focus remains on native bee species, which are better suited to local conditions and play an important role in sustaining biodiversity.

More than 250 farmers have been trained in ethical/native bee-friendly practices. The majority of the trainees have been rural women from far-flung areas like Pangi Valley. They harvest only from the supers, never the brood chamber, and don’t harvest at all if the super isn’t filled.

“Our work centres on helping people understand what bees mean to both humans and the wider ecosystem. If bees can survive in a place, it signals a healthy environment, and ultimately, our own food systems depend on that balance. The use of pesticides and chemicals disrupts this delicate relationship, making it crucial for people to recognise just how important bees are,” adds Aditya.

Tenacious Bee Collective encourages the cultivation of local herbs and bee-friendly flora. This strengthens food sources for bees while creating additional income streams for farmers, who can use these herbs in value-added products.

Women are central to this ecosystem, and those trained through the collective are moving beyond beekeeping. Six are directly employed to cold-process and package honey. They are also involved in producing beeswax-based products such as candles, skin salves, and other small-batch items, adding both skill and value to the process.

“I enjoy working here with the other women from the village. We spend our days together, working and talking, and it creates a warm, supportive environment at the Tenacious Bee workshop. I look forward to coming here every day. It feels meaningful to know that others find inspiration in the work we do,” says Sunita, who was previously a homemaker and farmer and is now one of the beeswax experts.

Here, ecology and economy are not separate. Healthier ecosystems support livelihoods, and community participation ensures that this work remains sustainable over time.

At the heart of Tenacious Bee’s work is a shift in how beekeeping is understood — not just as production, but as knowledge.

In Badsar village, the collective has leased a small piece of farmland to develop a knowledge-exchange space around bees, flora and traditional practices. Beeboxes sit alongside patches of cultivated herbs, offering a living example of how biodiversity and agriculture can work together.

The goal is not only to produce honey, but to rebuild a system of learning. They host workshops, inviting artists, researchers and practitioners to engage with the space. These interactions create new ways of understanding bees as contributors to ecological balance, not just producers of honey.

Speaking about the experiential side of their work, Aditya says, “At the Apidome, which consists of wooden structures with built-in hives, guests can lie on a bed placed above active beehives, experiencing a deep, calming resonance similar to bhrahmi yoga. Visitors can also take part in honey tastings at the workshop, sampling different varieties and learning to appreciate the diversity of honey.”

Rethinking livelihoods through beekeeping

What sets Tenacious Bee apart is the way it approaches livelihoods.

In many spaces, sustainability is often linked to scaling up, such as producing more and reaching larger markets. Here, the approach is different. Production remains small-scale, processes are slow, and growth is measured in ecological and community terms as much as economic ones.

At Tenacious Bee, the economic impact is visible:

• Local beekeepers receive better support.

• Women gain access to skill-based income.

• Farmers find ways to work with their land rather than against it.

Tenacious Bee’s model suggests that small-scale production can work when the value of the final product is increased rather than the volume of honey extracted. The collective pays participating beekeepers premium rates, reportedly up to three times the market price, while building additional revenue through beeswax products, experiences and consulting.

Community involvement has been central to this progress. Early support from the village leadership helped build trust, and participation has grown steadily, with more residents engaging in different parts of the work.

“We also travel to different pop-ups and events in cities like Delhi. These experiences have really built our confidence, and we feel excited and proud to be part of them,” adds Sheena, who has been instrumental in running all the workshops and interventions in the village.

Sheena’s path to this role, however, has been shaped by a period away from formal work. After her children were born, Sheena stepped back to focus on raising her family. As they grew older, she began looking for an opportunity to return to work and build something of her own.

Tenacious Bee gave her that opportunity. What began as a chance to learn and work with beeswax has grown into a role where she now helps train others and plays a key role in the collective’s work in the village. For Sheena, returning to work has given her a space to use her skills and contribute to something she believes in.

In a time when both ecological systems and rural livelihoods are under strain, this model offers a grounded alternative. Not only does this model prioritise bee health, ecological restoration and small-scale production, but it also provides sustainable livelihoods for the people practising it.

In a time when both ecological systems and rural livelihoods are under strain, this model offers a grounded alternative.

More than just saving bees

The work of Tenacious Bee Collective is often framed around conservation, but it goes beyond that. It is about restoring relationships between people and land, between traditional knowledge and present-day practice, and between local communities and the markets they engage with.

Additionally, diversifying the economy around bees has made small-scale beekeeping more resilient than relying on honey alone.

By focusing on bees, the collective is addressing something larger. Pollinators sit at the centre of food systems and biodiversity, and hence, supporting them means strengthening entire ecosystems.

At the same time, grounding this work within the community ensures that it remains non-extractive. It builds ownership, creates skills, and allows people to shape their own livelihoods.

As conversations around climate and sustainability continue to grow, Tenacious Bee Collective’s story reminds us that meaningful change does not always begin at scale. Sometimes, it starts in small villages, through consistent work and through a willingness to rebuild what was never meant to be lost.

Just days after giving birth, Sheenam Gilhotra was told, “Get out, this isn’t your home.”

With a newborn in her arms and her marriage falling apart, Sheenam chose to rebuild her life instead of giving up. She filed for divorce, took up two jobs and started from scratch.

Today, she is saving every rupee to buy a home for her daughter, Shayra. A home where her daughter will never have to hear that she doesn’t belong.

Because sometimes, rebuilding your life starts with one decision: creating a place you can finally call your own."

#SingleMother #WomenEmpowerment #Motherhood #WomenOfIndia #DivorceRecovery #SingleParent #WomenWhoInspire #MotherDaughter #Resilience #WomenSupportingWomen #IndependentWomen #thebetterindia
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Originally reported and written in July 2023, this story has been republished as part of our archival content.

In 1917, when British rule prevailed over India, the government prepared a list to keep track of 32 of MK Gandhi’s closest associates. At number 10 was a name that history hasn’t forgotten since. 

Pir Muhammed Munis, a journalist known for the power of his pen, was instrumental in his role in the Champaran Satyagraha movement, also touted as India’s first organised act of civil disobedience.

Through his body of work, he scripted a record of heroism that is etched into the sands of time. 

To truly appreciate Munis’ role in the struggle for Independence, we trace our steps to 1916, when the British Raj was exercising exceeding control over Indians. One particularly vulnerable group were the farmers in Champaran, Bihar. 

The source of contention was the agrarian practices in the region. While the British were intent on the peasants growing indigo, a lucrative cash crop with sizable demand in the markets abroad, the farmers were deprived of land for growing food crops instead. This tussle culminated in a famine, causing the farmers to rise in revolt against the dominion of the British. As the conflict escalated, word reached Gandhi. How? 

Pir Muhammed Munis was behind it. 

 

A ‘rouge journalist’ 

The uprising of the peasants in Champaran wasn’t going unnoticed. The country was reading about it thanks to Munis, who left no stone unturned in letting his views reflect his patriotic feelings. In the years to come, Pir Muhammed Munis would go down in history as the journalist who raised his voice when it was most difficult to be heard. 

He chronicled the efforts of the farmers, the unlawful practices of the British and more such news in Hindi — despite the elite class being fluent in Urdu, Persian and English — displaying his ardent love for the language. In his later life, he went on to advocate for Hindi to be propagated amongst the masses. Anecdotes suggest during his later interactions with Gandhi, Munis even went on to teach the legend the language, a skill that greatly helped the latter. 

So persistent and vocal was he about his patriotic opinions that he was termed as “notorious”, “bitter” and “dangerous” by the British, eventually being branded as a ‘badmash patrakar (rouge journalist)’. 

A British Police document from the Azadi Ke Deewane Museum at Red Fort reads, “Pir Muhammed Munis is actually a dangerous and hoodlum journalist who through his questionable literature, brought to light the sufferings of a backward place like Champaran in Bihar.”

The letter that set the stage for the uprising

 

But nothing stopped Munis from continuing to write, his pen a double-edged sword. His works appeared frequently in Pratap, a Hindi weekly, and monthlys such as Gyanshakti and Gorakhpur. He was also on the editorial board of Desh launched and edited by Dr Rajendra Prasad.

The most famous letter among his repertoire of literary works is a letter he penned with local farmer Rajkumar Shukla, intended to be sent to Gandhi on 27 February 1917. Shukla conveyed the grievances of the farming community, while Munis coupled this with his power of words. An excerpt from the letter reads, “Our sad tale is much worse than what you and your comrades have suffered in South Africa”. 

In another letter dated 22 March 1917, Munis once again voiced his concerns about the peasants in Champaran, and asked Gandhi to pay them a visit. And when he did on 10 April 1917, people commended the bond between the two, often calling Munis Gandhi’s pillar as he hatched plans for the Champaran Satyagraha. 

As the first Satyagraha movement, it set the stage for future mass protests and uprisings. Gandhi set up schools in the Champaran area, gathered volunteers, conducted village surveys, organised protests, and strikes, and advocated for control over the sale of crops to be given to the farmers. And through this mutiny, Munis was by his side. 

This did not go down well with the British. As a letter written by W H Lewis, sub-division officer to the commissioner of Tirhut division indicates, “… Mr Gandhi got offers of assistance, the most prominent is Pir Muhammad. I have not (sic) full details of his career, but either Whitty or Marsham could give them. He is, I believe, a convert to Muhammadanism and was a teacher in the Raj School. He was dismissed from his post for virulent attacks on local management published in or about 1915 in the press.

He lives in Bettiah and works as a press correspondent for the Pratap of Lucknow, a paper which distinguished itself for its immoderate expressions on Champaran Questions… Pir Muhammad is the link between this Bettiah class of mostly educated and semi-educated men and the next class, i.e. the Raiyats’ own leaders…”

The result of the tyranny 

History never forgets the cries of the just, and the Champaran Satyagraha was proof of this. 

The mutiny ended with the British officers agreeing to formulate the Champaran Agrarian Act of 1918. The Act abolished the forcible cultivation of indigo and thus relieved tremendous pressure being put on the farmers here. The event has gone down in history as one of the first major revolts that forced the English to introduce a Bill in favour of the Indians. 

With the Tinkathia system being abolished, the farmers thought the worst was over. But the British continued to oppress them in different ways. Fuelled by ending this once and for all, Munis started Raiyati Sabha, a platform that would advocate for and protect the rights of the farming community. For this, Munis faced a six-month jail term. 

This wasn’t the last of imprisonment. In 1930 he was imprisoned in the Patna Camp jail for three months for his participation in the Salt Satyagraha of the Civil Disobedience Movement. 

However, nothing could deter him from his goal of protecting the rights of his countrymen. In 1937, he led sugarcane producers who were protesting against intermediaries who were pocketing a major part of the earnings. He was also elected member of the Champaran Zila Parishad (District Board) on the Congress ticket and became President of Bettiah Local Board, from which he resigned to join the Individual Civil Disobedience Movement.

Throughout his lifetime, he advocated for rural development, popularisation of Hindi in primary schools and the rights of his fellow Indians. Until his passing away on 23 September 1949 Munis continued to be a leader worth looking up to for his countrymen.

Lauding the efforts of Munis on his passing away, Pratap editor Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, wrote in his newspaper, “We have the utmost sorrow that Pir Muhammed Munis of Bettiah, Champaran district has died. We have the privilege to see such souls who are quietly lying aside. The world doesn’t come to know anything about their issues. The lesser these sons of Mother India are renowned, the more profound is their work, the more philanthropic.”

He further wrote, “You recited the dreadful story of Champaran to Gandhi ji and this was a result of your hard-work only that Mahatma Gandhi visited Champaran which made this land a pious place and the place which is unerasable in the pages of history”.

Sources 

Here's The Story Of Pir Muhammad Munis, A Hindi Journalist And Unsung Hero Of Champaran Satyagraha by Afroz Alam Sahil, Published on 10 April 2018. 

Republic Day 2022: From The man who designed the Tricolour to Unsung hero of Pasighat... saluting the heroes who made India great by Free Press Journal, Published on 25 January 2022. 

Pir Mohammad Munis: An organic intellectual activist of the Champaran Satyagraha by Two Circles, Published on 1 May 2013.  

When fear kept women silent, IPS officer Meeran Chadha Borwankar stepped in.

The 1994 Jalgaon scandal involved allegations of sexual exploitation and reportedly affected hundreds of women. Meeran Borwankar was the only woman in her 1981 IPS batch when she took on the investigation, despite pressure and warnings to stay away from Jalgaon.

Twelve women eventually came forward with formal complaints. The accused were convicted by a Sessions Court, though the convictions were later overturned by the High Court.

The case stayed with Meeran. It strengthened her belief in better police training and the need for more women in the police force.

Her story is about duty, courage and standing up when others are afraid to speak.

#MeeranBorwankar #MeeranChadhaBorwankar #JalgaonScandal #JalgaonCase #IPSOfficer #WomenInPolice #WomenInUniform #WomenOfIndia #IndianPolice #PoliceStories #WomenEmpowerment #JusticeForWomen #TheBetterIndia

Behind the closed cockpit door of flydubai flight FZ1073, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv on 30 September, 2026, Captain Smit Machchhar lay wounded on the floor while the jet lost more than 14,000 feet in 29 seconds, according to Flightradar24 data.

Israeli officials say his co-pilot had stabbed him and tried to crash the aircraft, which carried about 174 people.

From the floor, Machchhar reached the door release, and the door he opened let passengers and crew rush in and overpower the attacker. His act is the latest in a long line of Indian pilots who have pulled passengers back from the brink, and five such cases show how different those moments can be.

A wounded captain opens the cockpit door

Passenger Shota Musaev, a dentist, told CNN that he found the attacker on top of the pilot, still stabbing him, and he helped treat Machchhar, whose blood pressure had plummeted. The jet landed safely at Tabuk in Saudi Arabia, and Machchhar underwent surgery and is stable, according to the Indian Embassy in Riyadh.

Several world leaders have praised his courage and presence of mind, while flydubai has called the incident an altercation, and authorities are still establishing the facts.

Machchhar, a 39-year-old father of two from Mumbai, was expected to join his family's textile business until he developed a passion for aviation at 19.

He trained in Dunedin, New Zealand, where his instructor Philip Kean remembered a jovial young man who tried hard, and he then spent 11 years at SpiceJet, rising to Line Training Captain with more than 9,500 hours, before joining flydubai in June 2022.

A burning engine after take-off from Patna

The airline where Machchhar spent those 11 years faced its own crisis on 19 June, 2022, when an engine caught fire soon after SpiceJet Boeing 737 flight SG723 left Patna for Delhi with 185 passengers.

Captain Monica Khanna switched off the affected engine without delay, and she and first officer Balpreet Singh Bhatia returned to Patna with only one engine functioning. All passengers deboarded safely, and industrialist Anand Mahindra was among those who publicly appreciated Khanna.

Circling for two hours over Tiruchirappalli

Not every crisis announces itself with flames, as Air India Express flight IX 613 showed on 11 October, 2024, when its landing gear failed to retract after take-off from Tiruchirappalli for Sharjah with 141 passengers. 

Captain Iqrom Rifadly Fahmi Zainal and co-pilot Maitryee Shrikrishna Shitole decided to return, and they circled for more than two hours, completing 24 small loops and three larger ones while dumping fuel and staying in continuous contact with air traffic control.

Air traffic control approved a belly landing and ground teams sprayed foam on the runway, but the wheels deployed as the aircraft prepared to land, and the pilots touched down normally at 8.15 pm. Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu praised the crew and the emergency teams.

A cardiac arrest on a flight from Chicago

Medical emergencies test pilots in a different way, as Air India showed in late 2010, when it reported three diversions in two months to save passengers' lives. On 26 November, Captain A K Singh, commander of flight AI 126 from Chicago to Delhi, diverted to Toronto after 70-year-old N Rodrigues suffered a cardiac arrest.

Singh's decision came 20 days after Captain J S Gill, in command of flight AI 188 from Toronto to Delhi, diverted to Stockholm on 6 November to save the life of passenger Karnail Singh Jaswal, and both captains chose to land abroad rather than carry on towards Delhi with a passenger in crisis.

A sick passenger and a dash to Bengaluru

Three weeks after Singh, on 17 December, Captain R S Attari commanded Kochi to Delhi flight IC 466, which was meant to fly non-stop and took off at 7.30 am with 145 passengers. After a passenger complained of giddiness and doctors on board gave medical assistance, the flight diverted to Bengaluru, where an ambulance was ready.

The passenger and four family members went straight to Columbia Asia Hospital, the flight resumed its journey to Delhi at 9.30 am, and the passenger, found fit after treatment, flew on that evening.

These five flights span nearly 16 years and cover a knife attack, a burning engine, a hydraulic failure and two medical emergencies. In each case the pilots chose a course that brought their passengers to safety or to a hospital, and as Machchhar recovers in Saudi Arabia, his story joins theirs.

Sources:

1. 'Pilot stabbed his co-pilot in apparent attempt to crash Israel-bound plane, Netanyahu says': by NBC News, Published on [date not visible; story is from 30 Sep–1 Oct 2026], 

2. 'Dubai to Tel Aviv flight diverted to Saudi Arabia' (live updates): by CNN, Published on 30 September 2026

3. 'Passengers and crew foil co-pilot's apparent attempt to crash FlyDubai flight to Israel': By CNBC, Published on 1 October 2026

4. Flightradar24 on X, "Flydubai flight #FZ1073, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 … diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, following an onboard security incident": by Flightradar24 for X, Published on 30 September 2026

5. 'Aircraft faces mid-air glitch after take-off from Tiruchirappalli, lands safely': by PTI for Deccan Herald, Published on 11 October 2024

6. 'Spicejet Pilot Monica Khanna Safely Lands Patna-Delhi Flight After it Caught Fire': by Aarushi Agrawal for The Better India, Published on 21 June 2022

7. 'AI diverts Kochi-Delhi flight to Blore to save a life': by Deccan Herald.

A wire, a tool and a room full of trainees are familiar sights for Kester Dason. But ask him what happens when the same students have to sit through a theory lesson, and the picture changes.

After nearly 27 years in industrial training, Kester has learnt to notice the difference. Many of the wireman trainees he teaches today join after Class 8 and may struggle with formulas or even basic arithmetic. Yet, when they step into the practical lab, he sees them become more confident, curious and willing to try.

“Those boys are wonderful when it comes to practical work,” he says.

The challenge was getting that same energy into lessons that involved sitting, listening or reading. For years, Kester relied largely on presentations and videos to supplement his classes. That began to change after he attended a 12-day training programme at L&T Skill Trainers Academy (STA) in August 2025.

Larsen & Toubro launched the Skill Trainers Academy on 15 March 2021, with a focus on strengthening the trainers who form an important link between vocational education and the workplace. At the Academy, Kester was introduced to interactive approaches such as Kahoot quizzes, icebreakers and activity-based learning.

Back in his classroom, he began putting them to use.

Instead of beginning immediately with theory, he started using icebreakers to get students comfortable and introduced Kahoot to give them a chance to participate rather than simply listen.

For Kester, the shift was not about replacing practical training. It was about finding better ways to connect theory with the way his students learn best: through participation and action.

Why trainer capacity matters to India’s skilling ecosystem

The genesis of the L&T Skill Trainers Academy was the critical need to strengthen the trainers working across India’s skilling ecosystem, as identified by Mr A M Naik, Chairman Emeritus, L&T, when he was appointed the Chairman of National Skill Development Corporation(NSDC) in November 2018.

A trainer, K Ramakrishnan, Chief Executive, L&T Skill Development Mission, explains, does more than pass on technical knowledge. He and B. S Saluja, Head, Strategic Partnerships, L&T Skill Trainers Academy and about 70% of the academy’s trainers are retired L&T employees, now sharing their years of experience to give back to society. 

He describes meaningful skilling through three elements: knowledge, skills and attitude. While knowledge gives a trainee an understanding of a trade and skills help them apply it, he believes attitude has a wider bearing on how a person works.

“Attitude decides a lot or makes a lot of impact as far as quality, safety and productivity is concerned,” he says. “It also makes you work with a lot of commitment and passion.”

That responsibility is particularly significant in India’s ITI ecosystem, which Ramakrishnan says includes around 15,000 ITIs, including roughly 5,000 government-run institutions. He also points to infrastructure and equipment gaps, administrative responsibilities, and a mismatch in some places between the trades being taught and local job demand.

This is where STA’s approach begins with the trainer rather than the student.

Saluja says the academy primarily works with instructors nominated by state vocational education and skill development departments.

“We work with vocational education and skilling departments across different states and collaborate with them to have their trainers participate in the programme.” 

Mabel Abraham, Head of Corporate Social Initiatives for Larsen & Toubro Limited, says this focus on trainers is what gives the initiative a wider ecosystem impact. “While many skilling programmes are designed to directly train students and beneficiaries, this effort seeks to address a critical gap in India’s skilling landscape by strengthening the trainer ecosystem itself,” she says.

By building a larger pool of capable, industry-ready trainers and strengthening their capacity, pedagogy, and delivery readiness, the initiative aims to create a multiplier effect across skilling programmes. “Given the growing demand for skilled talent in India, strengthening the trainer pipeline is an important enabler for long-term workforce development,” Abraham adds.

That multiplier effect is also reflected in the reach of the programme. From FY 2022–23 to date, more than 4,500 trainers have been trained through the initiative. Based on the estimated reach of an ITI instructor training 20 students a year and a Diploma/SSC trainer reaching 60 students a year, the programme has recorded an impact of 1,35,480 beneficiaries year-on-year. 

Inside L&T Skill Trainers Academy

At L&T Skill Trainers Academy in Mumbai, the training is designed to combine teaching methods, technical learning and practical exposure.

Its standard residential programme typically runs for 12 days. The first 1.5 to two days focus on “platform training”, covering interactive teaching methods and digital engagement, before participants move into trade-specific technical training.

Of the seven days devoted to technical training, about 30% is theory, and 70% is hands-on work, Ramakrishnan explains.

The pedagogy component also covers how to plan, deliver and evaluate a lesson. At the end, each trainer conducts a five- to seven-minute teach-back session, assessed on aspects including eye contact, voice clarity, subject knowledge, engagement and participation.

Daily formative assessments are also used to provide feedback during the programme.

The experience extends beyond the classroom. Participants begin their day with yoga, attend theory sessions and practical labs, and take part in activities around communication, team building, time management and personal effectiveness. Industry visits are tailored to their trades, while activities such as sports and photography competitions and punctuality awards encourage participation.

Digital tools are another part of the training. Trainers are introduced to tools such as Kahoot and Nearpod for interactive assessment, while optional sessions cover GenAI tools, prompt engineering and presentation tools.

One example is Kahoot, where students answer questions on their phones and immediately see how they have performed. Ramakrishnan says such tools can turn revision into an engaging exercise rather than another lecture.

The learning continues after participants leave the Academy. Trainers remain connected through WhatsApp groups, where they share practices they have implemented, while the Academy conducts targeted online sessions and visits ITIs to understand what has changed after training.

For STA, the larger aim is straightforward: strengthen the trainer, improve what happens in the classroom and allow those changes to reach students.

When training entered the classroom

For Kester, the real test of what he learnt at STA began when he returned to his classroom.

One of the first changes was simple: he stopped treating theory as the starting point of every lesson.

“L&T instructed us not to open the theoretical part immediately,” he says. “We need to have an ice-breaking session.”

The experience also changed how Kester looked at participation. Around 40% of his trainees are comfortable participating at the board, while others struggle with vocabulary and confidence. He realised that putting hesitant students on the spot could make them withdraw rather than participate.

“I have not sustained the process,” he says of one such activity. “It will suppress them.”

Instead, he has focused on approaches that allow more trainees to participate without making them uncomfortable.

Today, Kester teaches around 40 trainees and says the interactive methods are helping motivate and involve them. He reports a 10–15% improvement in attendance and a 10–20% improvement in performance.

But the numbers are only part of what he sees.

In the practical lab, students complete tasks independently, repeat them, and identify faults, even if their speed varies.

For Kester, that progress connects directly to what he has always wanted for his students: the ability to turn what they learn into an opportunity to work.

Over the years, his students have gone on to complete diploma courses, participate in state-level skill competitions and pursue employment opportunities. He recalls 80 students who cleared the written examination for Tamil Nadu Electricity Board recruitment and moved on to the practical selection stage.

“Apart from education, acquiring a job for my students is the most important thing,” Kester says. “Everyone can share the knowledge. But having the knowledge to acquire a job for them is the most important thing.”

As he looks towards moving into a training officer role, he now wants to develop other trainers and pass on what he has learnt.

That is where his experience connects back to the larger idea behind STA. The training did not stay at the Academy. It travelled with him into his classroom, shaped the way he worked with his trainees and gave him new methods to share with fellow instructors.

As Kester puts it, teaching is more than a profession or academics.

“It’s an emotional connection.”

And sometimes, that connection begins with something as simple as giving a student a chance to participate, try again and discover that they can do it.

This article is published in partnership with Larsen & Toubro

All images courtesy of Larsen & Toubro

Anjali Neeraj remembers the specific frustration: a picnic spot that locals had loved for years, its water clean and its shade deep, slowly buried under bottles, wrappers and plastic bags left behind each weekend. "We could not just walk past it," she is seen saying in an Instagram video of the moment that prompted her and her sister Ruchi to act.

In 2023, the two sisters founded the Vasudha Kalyan United Foundation in Hazaribagh, and began what would become one of Jharkhand's most sustained community-led campaigns against plastic waste in its water bodies. 

By mid-2025, a news report put the total waste removed at 50,000 kg. 

The foundation's own latest figure, shared in connection with The Better India's Civic Sense Heroes campaign, is more than 80,000 kg — drawn from rivers, lakes, ponds and waterfalls across the state.

That number is the result of hundreds of volunteer clean-ups, not a single event.

How one local clean-up spread across Jharkhand 

The sisters started where the problem was most visible: the reservoirs and water bodies around Hazaribagh. Their method was straightforward — invite residents, bring tools, remove the waste, and make sure people could see how much had accumulated in places they thought of as their own. 

A 2025 report noted that the foundation had mobilised local communities to participate directly rather than waiting for municipal workers or government agencies to act.

That approach has since carried them beyond their home city. Recent clean-up drives have taken in Tamasin Waterfall, Tilaiya Dam and Hazaribagh Jheel — sites that the Jharkhand Tourism Department lists among the state's water-based destinations, precisely the kinds of scenic spots that attract the most visitors and, with them, the most casual littering.

Tamasin, with its tiered cascade through forest, and Tilaiya, whose reservoir and surrounding hills are described on the tourism department's pages as a popular picnic destination, offer a particular kind of irony: the landscapes people travel to see are the ones accumulating what they leave behind.

What happens after the volunteers leave? 

Every site the sisters work on makes the same demand: come back.

A water body cleaned on Sunday is not immune to the following weekend. 

Anjali and Ruchi have been clear about this from the beginning, which is why their work has two tracks running in parallel. 

One is the clean-up itself — physical, visible, measurable in tonnes. The other is awareness: talks in schools, conversations at village gatherings, presence at the picnic spots where littering happens most.

The logic is the same as the one that has made similar efforts work elsewhere. The Better India has reported on initiatives like Chinu Kwatra's Beach Warriors in Mumbai, where nine years of weekly clean-ups on four beaches have shifted not just the volume of waste removed but what volunteers and bystanders believe about whose responsibility a shared space is. The change, as Kwatra has put it, is slow — but it shows up.

For the Vasudha Kalyan United Foundation, the awareness component is an attempt to close the gap between the clean-up and the next weekend. Schools and visitor sites are where the conversation can reach people before their habits are set for the day's outing, not after.

Where rules end, citizen action begins 

India prohibited identified single-use plastics with high litter potential from 1 July 2022 under the Plastic Waste Management Rules. The country generated about 4.14 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2022–23, according to figures the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change cited in Parliament. 

The Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board has described plastic waste management in the state as a challenge that requires coordinated effort across communities, agencies and local enforcement.

Rules create the framework. What fills the gap between a rule and a changed behaviour is usually a group of people willing to make the problem visible, again and again, until it becomes impossible to ignore.

That is, precisely, what Anjali and Ruchi have spent two years doing.

80,000 kg removed. But that is not the finish line

More than 80,000 kg is a striking figure. It is also, in its own way, a reminder of what keeps arriving. Every bottle, every wrapper, every discarded packet on a riverbank represents a choice someone made in a space they shared with everyone else — and the work of two sisters who decided that was not good enough.

The clean-up drives will continue. So will the awareness sessions. The Jharkhand rivers and waterfalls that have been cleared once will need clearing again. What Anjali and Ruchi are really building, one water body and one conversation at a time, is the case that responsibility for a public space does not end when the picnic does.

The kilograms removed are the measure of what has been done. The measure of whether it has worked will be how much less there is to remove next time.

About the campaign

This story is part of The Better India's #CivicSenseRevolution, a year-long nationwide campaign celebrating citizens who take responsibility for the places and communities we all share. From cleaner streets and safer roads to restored lakes and public spaces, we're looking for everyday Indians turning civic sense into action. Know someone doing work like this? Nominate your Civic Sense Hero here.

Sources

1. ‘Sisters Lead Fight In H’bag, Mobilise Locals To Clean Reservoirs’: by Vishvendu Jaipuriar for The Times of India, Published on 5 June 2025, The Times of India source

2. ‘Parliament Question: Plastic Waste In The Country’: by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for Press Information Bureau, Published on 12 December 2024, Press Information Bureau source

3. ‘Plastic Wastes’: by Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board, Updated on 6 August 2026, Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board source

This article has been published in partnership with Kalaari Capital.

In 2020, Akash Gupta, Abhinav Roy and Ankit Joshi were in a dusty workshop in Bhopal trying to build an electric last-mile delivery truck.

But the more they worked on the truck, the more one problem began to overshadow the rest.

A commercial vehicle earns when it is moving. A diesel truck could refuel in minutes, while an electric one might spend an hour or more plugged in. Then there was range, battery life and safety. Each of those questions seemed to lead back to the same component.

“If refuelling happens in 10 to 15 minutes, why does it need one or two hours to charge a truck?” Akash remembers wondering.

At the time, the three were doing much of the work themselves. “It was three of us,” he recalls. “Ankit used to do all the wiring, Abhinav used to write all the code, and I was doing some welding of our initial prototypes.”

When seven more people joined them, they moved into a basement and painted the floor so the team would have a cleaner place to work.

By then, the insight that would change what they were building had become difficult to ignore. To make the truck they wanted practical, they first needed a battery that could charge quickly, last for years and remain safe without making the vehicle too expensive.

So they stopped trying to build the whole truck and focused on what they believed was the harder problem inside it.

It started with racing cars built in college

The decision to build together in 2020 had been years in the making.

Akash and Abhinav met at IIT-BHU in 2013, where Akash led the automobile club and Abhinav led aeromodelling. Their hours outside class went into racing cars, drones and RC planes.

“We used to build a lot of racing cars in college, and that is where we got our hands dirty,” Akash says. “That is how we got interested in product building, and we got addicted to it in some way.”

Ankit, another automobile enthusiast who had worked on electric powertrain technology, later joined them.

The three had already thought about building a company while in college. But they also knew that starting a hardware business would need more than enthusiasm. So after graduating, they spent a few years learning elsewhere.

Akash joined the JSW Group and worked on an electric car project, gaining experience on the business side of EVs. Abhinav worked in robotics and automotive technology. Ankit pursued further studies before deciding that building products interested him more than continuing towards a PhD.

By 2020, their paths opened up again. Akash’s EV project at JSW had been put on hold, while the pandemic interrupted some of the R&D work Abhinav was involved in. The three decided to return to the idea they had been carrying since college, this time full-time.

Those years of experience had also made one gap clearer.

“You can buy a good motor, you can buy a good instrument cluster,” Akash explains. “But you could not buy a battery pack. So that was the realisation in 2020. We thought, rather than building a full truck, let’s just focus on the battery.”

The problem was not finding battery cells. It was putting them together into a pack that could give a driver good range, charge quickly, stay safe and continue performing for years.

Charging time became their first target. They began with a goal of around 30 minutes and hoped eventually to reach 15. After months of experiments, they achieved that number in the lab.

“It was 15-minute charging, but it was lab results,” Akash says. “Then you have to make a product out of it. If a 15-minute battery is heavier, people will not buy it. You need range, fast charging, safety and cost to work together.”

Trying to make all four work at once led them to another problem. The faster a battery charges, the more carefully its heat has to be managed.

How do you keep a fast-charging battery cool?

A battery pack contains many smaller cells. If one cell overheats badly, that heat can reach the cells beside it and, in the worst case, trigger a chain reaction.

The team chose immersion cooling to manage this. The battery cells sit surrounded by a special liquid that does not conduct electricity but can absorb and carry away heat.

“If you have a good cooling system, you can charge the battery faster while still keeping it cool enough,” Abhinav explains. “It also helps with safety. If something goes wrong in one cell, you want to cool it quickly so the issue stays there instead of spreading to the next cell.”

Choosing immersion cooling was only the beginning.

“What we were doing was unconventional,” Akash says. “We were flooding batteries with battery coolant for better thermal management. But it also has its own challenges. Your weight goes up, your cost goes up, your leakages go up.”

That liquid had to remain inside the battery for years, even though wires and electrical connections still needed to pass through the casing. Abhinav says the team had to develop its own connectors to bring those connections out while keeping the battery sealed.

Making five or 10 prototypes work was one challenge. Making every pack coming off a production line equally reliable was much harder.

“Getting that sealing consistent was a problem,” Abhinav says. “In the lab, the engineers are doing the sealing themselves. Then you have to transfer that process to a production line, where someone else can also make a leak-proof pack.”

Cooling alone was not enough either.

The individual cells inside a battery can behave slightly differently. One may heat up faster, store slightly less energy or age differently from another. If those differences grow over time, one weaker cell can begin affecting the performance of the entire pack.

Clean Electric therefore began selecting and matching cells more carefully and developed its own battery management system to keep track of what was happening inside.

Its 0Kelvin technology combines immersion cooling with software that looks at information such as temperature, voltage and current while the battery is being used or charged. The system can adjust the charging rate as conditions change, rather than waiting for the battery to become too hot. Clean Electric calls this Smart Temperature Modulation.

The company also built Hive, a platform that collects data from batteries already operating in the field. That information is used to monitor battery health, diagnose problems and understand how packs are performing over time.

Its SONIC charging system fits into the same approach: battery and charger are designed to work together rather than treating charging as a separate step.

The challenge, therefore, was no longer simply reaching 15 minutes once in a laboratory. The battery had to repeat that performance safely across different vehicles, climates and years of use.

The road quickly showed the team how difficult that could be.

In colder regions, for instance, water sometimes separated from the coolant and interfered with electronics inside the pack.

“It was an intermittent issue,” Abhinav says. “It would happen sometimes and not happen at other times. So you first have to recreate the problem, trace the root cause and then figure out how to solve it.”

Could the battery survive an autorickshaw’s working day?

That question became even more important when the batteries began going into commercial three-wheelers.

An electric autorickshaw in India is often a source of daily income. Its battery can be put through a far more demanding routine than one inside a privately owned car.

“In India, especially in the three-wheeler segment, these vehicles can do about 200 kilometres every day,” Abhinav says. “The range is also typically around 200 kilometres, so they may use one full charge every day. We also pack in less battery to keep the product affordable.”

That means the same battery may be charged, used through a full working day and charged again, day after day.

For the driver, battery life and charging time are therefore more than specifications on a brochure. An early replacement is a major expense. An hour spent charging is an hour when the vehicle cannot be carrying passengers or earning money.

Years of everyday use are now giving the team information that short lab tests could never provide. Abhinav says some early vehicles have travelled around 70,000 to 80,000 km while their batteries show roughly four percent degradation.

“The degradation numbers were somewhat better than what we were even expecting,” he says.

Safety was tested in a much less controlled way.

Abhinav recalls an autorickshaw being charged using what he describes as an improvised wiring arrangement. According to him, the fault began outside the battery: the charger caught fire, and the flames eventually spread through the vehicle.

“The whole vehicle got burned. The battery was still intact,” he says. “The connectors had melted, but the battery was still intact. You could change some plastic bits and reuse the battery.”

The incident damaged components around the pack, but the failure did not spread through the battery cells themselves.

For Abhinav, that mattered because it showed how the battery behaved in exactly the sort of uncontrolled situation that is difficult to reproduce fully inside a laboratory.

“It was a good validation that whatever we had built actually takes the abuse in the real world,” he says.

From 3 batteries to thousands of kilometres

Clean Electric’s first outside order had been far smaller. In 2021, Bounce Infinity ordered three battery packs.

Around the same period, reports of electric two-wheelers catching fire were making battery safety a visible concern for Indian EV buyers.

“Safety got us the entry point,” Akash says. “Cycle life takes years of data to prove, but safety was something you could test much sooner.”

Over time, vehicle manufacturers began adding another perspective.

Omega Seiki Mobility says it first tested Clean Electric’s batteries at its Pune factory and then in vehicles, increasing volumes gradually as their performance remained satisfactory.

“The battery enables a higher-range offering, with approximately 230 to 250 km of actual on-ground range,” OSM says. “This supports customers who prefer longer continuous running and do not want repeated charging during the day.”

The company continues to push for improvements too, including further work on the electrical architecture and battery management system.

Baxy, another manufacturer using the packs, says its vehicles fitted with Clean Electric batteries have travelled approximately 30,000 to 48,000 km without customers raising specific degradation concerns.

“We have not observed functional or safety hazards with the packs,” the company says, adding that it has received “responsive service, training and field support” from Clean Electric.

That feedback feeds back into the same process that began in Bhopal: build something, see how it behaves once people start using it, and return to the engineering.

“Some key decisions have to be right because you will live with them for a long time,” Abhinav says. “But many smaller decisions are reversible. You can pick an answer, test it, and if it is wrong, come back and change it. You learn by doing and keep iterating.”

The dusty Bhopal workshop has since given way to a larger operation in Pune. Clean Electric says more than 6,000 of its batteries have now been deployed across over 100 locations and have collectively covered more than 20 million kilometres.

Yet the larger problem remains much the same.

For an EV to become a practical alternative at scale, its battery has to charge quickly without creating new safety risks, survive years of repeated use, offer enough range and remain affordable.

For a commercial driver, all of that engineering eventually comes down to something much simpler: whether the vehicle can spend more of the day on the road and less of it charging, being repaired or worrying its owner.

When Abhinav is asked which single piece of technology makes him proudest, he does not choose one.

“A lot of things have to work right,” he says, “and they have to work together to deliver a balanced product.”

That may be the larger challenge Clean Electric is trying to solve. The aim is not simply to make electricity enter a battery faster, but to make the battery itself less of a compromise in choosing an electric vehicle.

The truck that brought Akash, Abhinav and Ankit into that dusty Bhopal workshop was never the product they ultimately built. Instead, it helped them find the problem that could determine how useful that truck, an autorickshaw or any other EV would be once it reached the road.

You might have admired water lilies blooming in ponds and assumed they need a large water body to grow. But you can grow these flowers at home too, even if all you have is a sunny terrace, balcony, or garden corner.

Ananthapur-based gardener and gardening content creator Deepu, who shares gardening tips on Instagram as @gardening.with.deepu, uses an easy pot-in-pot method to grow water lilies. All you need are two pots, some garden soil, compost, and a sunny spot.

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A post shared by 👁️‍🗨️🌱little gardener pradeep (@_gardening.with.deepu)

Here is how the process works.

1. Begin with two pots

Take a 10- to 12-inch plant pot with drainage holes. You will also need a larger 16 to 20-inch tub, bucket, or container without holes.

The smaller pot will hold your water lily and soil, while the larger one will hold the water around it.

2. Get the soil ready

Fill the smaller pot about three-fourths full with a mix of 70 percent garden soil and 30 percent compost.

Keep the mixture fairly heavy. The gardener recommends avoiding cocopeat and other light potting mixes because they can float around once the pot goes into water.

3. Plant the rhizome

Place the water lily rhizome in the soil at a slight angle, keeping its growing tip pointing upwards.

Cover it lightly with soil, leaving the growing tip in a position where it can put out new growth.

4. Cover the soil

Once the rhizome is in place, add a thin layer of sand or small stones over the soil.

This keeps the soil from floating out when you start filling the outer container with water.

5. Add the water

Now place the smaller pot inside the larger container.

Slowly pour water into the outer container until it sits around five to 10 centimetres above the soil level.

As your water lily grows, you can gradually increase the depth to around 20 to 30 cm.

6. Let the sun do its work

Find a spot where your water lily gets around six to eight hours of direct sunlight every day.

This is especially important if you are waiting for those flowers to appear. The more suitable sunlight the plant gets, the better its chances of flowering.

7. Give it some regular care

As the plant grows, remove old leaves from time to time and keep the water level topped up.

Once a month, you can add compost to the pot. Deepu suggests wrapping the compost in a piece of cloth before adding it, so it stays contained instead of spreading through the water.

Why the two-pot setup helps

The pot-in-pot method keeps the soil and water separate while giving the water lily the conditions it needs to grow.

It also makes things easier when you need to change the water, add compost, or take the plant out for repotting or dividing. And that means you do not need a pond to enjoy a water lily at home. A couple of pots and a sunny corner can be enough to get started.

On 24 April 1890, more than 10,000 mill workers filled the Race Course Ground at Mahalaxmi in Bombay to ask for something most Indians now take for granted, a weekly day of rest. 

Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, a mill storekeeper turned organiser, had called the gathering after mill owners decided to shut the mills two days every week, and many women workers also addressed the crowd. 

Mill owners accepted a Sunday holiday on 10 June, 1890, and that year the Government of India included Lokhande as an associate member of its Factory Labour Commission.

Born in 1848 in Thane, Lokhande worked for the railways and the postal department before he joined the Mandavi Textile Mills as a storekeeper in 1870. 

Life on the mill floor exposed him to punishing working hours and miserable living conditions, and that experience prompted him to organise the mill hands into an association that pressed their grievances.

How a rest day became a retirement question

Lokhande's campaign concerned rest rather than retirement, yet it began a long argument about what employers and the state owed the people who ran India's factories, and that argument moved slowly. 

The first Provident Fund Act arrived in 1925, but it regulated the funds of only some private concerns, so its reach stayed limited. In 1929, the Royal Commission on Labour stressed the need for provident funds for industrial workers, and the Indian Labour Conference of 1948 agreed that a statutory scheme for industrial workers could be introduced.

To test the idea in a restricted field, the government launched the Coal Mines Provident Fund Scheme in 1948. Its success led to demands for expansion to other industries, and the Conference of Provincial Labour Ministers in January 1951 largely endorsed proposed legislation for that purpose, which set the stage for a national law.

The ordinance that reached the mills

The Government of India promulgated the Employees' Provident Funds Ordinance on 15 November, 1951, and the Employees' Provident Funds Act replaced it on 4 March, 1952. The scheme then came into force in stages, and by 1 November, 1952 it covered six industries, namely cement, cigarettes, engineering products, iron and steel, paper and textiles. 

Textile workers, the trade Lokhande had organised in Bombay, therefore stood among the first to gain cover, which brought the story of the mills full circle.

A tripartite Central Board of Trustees, with representatives of the central and state governments, employers and employees, administers the Act and its schemes. 

The board runs a contributory provident fund, a pension scheme and an insurance scheme for workers in the organised sector, while the Ministry of Labour and Employment holds administrative control over the organisation.

How the safety net widened

In the decades that followed, the safety net widened, as the Employees' Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme of 1976 began paying a benefit when a member dies, and the  Employees' Pension Scheme of 1995 replaced the Employees' Family Pension Scheme of 1971 and started paying monthly pensions on retirement, disability and death of a member. 

EPFO's official website describes the body as one of the world's largest organisations by clientele and the volume of financial transactions.

The scheme now answers a worker's everyday needs as well as retirement. Members receive their accumulation plus interest on retirement, resignation or death, and can make partial withdrawals for house construction, higher education, marriage or illness. 

The Act extends to 187 classes of establishments, and any such establishment that employs more than 19 persons comes under it automatically.

The latest figures show how far the idea has travelled, since Business Standard reported on 22 September, 2026 that EPFO has about 7.98 crore contributing members, that its pension scheme benefits around 82 lakh pensioners and that it oversees retirement savings of more than Rs 25 lakh crore. 

More than 130 years separate the Race Course Ground from today's EPFO offices, yet both rest on the claim Lokhande's crowd pressed on Bombay's mill owners: that labour deserves protection beyond the wage packet. 

The Sunday holiday gave mill hands time to recover, and the provident fund, pension and insurance schemes now give crores of Indians a measure of security once their careers end.

No single law traces to Mahalaxmi, but the demands raised there fed the expectation that employers and the state share responsibility for workers' futures.

Sources:

1. 'About Us': by EPFO for Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, Published on  date not shown on page

2. 'Narayan Lokhande: Founder of the Indian Labour Movement': by  author not credited   for Labour File

3. 'Imperfect providence': by Business Standard Editorial Comment for Business Standard, Published on 22 September, 2026

4. 'Laws for Labour Welfare and Social Security, Unit 27: The Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act': by IGNOU for eGyankosh

“They said you won’t be able to raise a daughter alone.”

Viraj heard this many times. But instead of answering with words, he chose to learn. Every night, he taught himself something new. Every morning, he tried to become a better father.

Today, his 6-year-old daughter comes home from school and looks for her dad first. To her, he is not just her father. He is her safest place.

Maybe that’s what being a parent really means. You don’t have to know everything or get everything right. You just have to be the person your child can always come back to.

#SingleFather #SingleDad #FatherDaughter #SingleParent #ParentingStory #Fatherhood #DadsOfIndia #ParentingJourney #FatherDaughterBond #RaisingKids #IndianFathers #Parenting #FamilyLove #thebetterindia

[Single father raising daughter, single dad raising daughter, single father parenting story, single dad parenting India, father daughter bond, single parent success story, single father journey, raising a daughter alone, single father and daughter, fatherhood story India, inspiring father story, single dad India, parenting story, father daughter relationship, dedicated father]

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On a rainy day, a snake does not know that the dry place it has found belongs to a human being.

It may be a garage, a storeroom, a pile of construction material, a drain, a garden, a car bonnet or the space beneath a bed.

If its usual shelter is filled with water, the animal is simply looking for somewhere else to survive.

That is one reason snake encounters become more common during India’s rainy months.

Last monsoon, such encounters ranged from apartment buildings to university campuses. In Agra, rescuers reportedly attended more than 100 snake-rescue calls between June and mid-July, while snakes were also reported inside car bonnets and chicken coops in Kashmir.

The sightings may make for startling photographs. But the scale of the problem is difficult to measure because many bites never enter the formal healthcare system, according to the Government of India’s NCDC Standard Treatment Guidelines for Management of Snake Bite. It notes that many victims initially approach traditional healers and are not registered at hospitals.

A new 2026 study published in PLOS Medicine by researchers associated with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine estimates that between 2.1 million and 7 million people may be envenomed by snakes globally each year.

Its modelling places India among the countries carrying the largest burden, with estimates of hundreds of thousands of cases and an upper estimate of about 1.3 million snakebites a year.

India’s death toll is also substantial.

Earlier research based on nationally representative mortality data estimated about 58,000 snakebite deaths a year between 2000 and 2019. A 2022 Nature Communications analysis estimated 51,100 snakebite deaths in India in 2019 alone, while noting considerable uncertainty around the figures.

The numbers vary because snakebite remains underreported.

But in India, snakebite is simultaneously a wildlife issue, a public-health problem and a question of how people build and inhabit landscapes.

The Better India looked into public-health data and spoke to Baiju Raj, Director of Conservation Projects and Senior Wildlife Biologist at Wildlife SOS, to understand why these encounters happen, why some become fatal and why even a centuries-old belief about milk can put snakes at risk.

When rain changes the map

Snakes are ectothermic animals, meaning that their body temperature is regulated largely through their surroundings. Weather, temperature and water therefore influence where they can shelter and move.

“When it is sunny, snakes move towards cooler places. That is how their body thermoregulation works,” Raj explains. “When it rains, whether it is the monsoon, a sudden shower or an unprecedented flood, it can completely disrupt the snake’s surroundings.”

A burrow, crevice or patch of vegetation that was safe yesterday may be flooded today.

“They have to move away from the water and find land or some kind of shelter,” he says.

That shelter can be anywhere that offers protection. This is why the idea that a snake has somehow decided to “invade” a house can be misleading.

“It’s not necessarily the snake’s mistake. The problem is that we are sometimes inviting them,” Raj says.

“Wherever you have garbage, unused materials or things that have been lying in one corner for years, rats are likely to move in,” he adds.

“If you have rats in a car, for example, the smell of rat urine can become extremely strong,” he explains. “Snakes can detect that smell and may move towards the area because they associate it with a potential food source.”

That means the problem is not confined to villages or mud houses.

“Snakes are not necessarily forest animals that live only in the jungle, like tigers or leopards. Wherever they find suitable shelter and a place where prey such as rats are available, they can survive.”

Can we check if the snake is venomous or not?

The first mistake after seeing a snake is to find out what it is, Raj warns. Several species can look similar, and approaching an animal to obtain a better view can turn an encounter into a confrontation. So, what is the ideal first response when one sees a snake?

“We always tell people not to go near the snake,” Raj says. “Observe it from a safe distance and keep track of where it is moving.”

If it can be done without approaching the animal, a photograph may be useful.

“Our rescuers often ask people to send us a photograph,” he says. “Even if it takes an hour for the rescuer to reach the location, a photograph may allow us to identify the snake and tell the person whether it is a rat snake or another harmless species.”

What should not happen is an attempt to catch it.

Over 100 snake rescues this monsoon: Why #WorldSnakeDay matters more than ever! 🌧

This #WorldSnakeDay, Wildlife SOS is raising awareness about the sharp rise in human-snake conflict, especially during the monsoon. In June and early July alone, our teams responded to over 100… pic.twitter.com/4h6jMJrMHQ

— Wildlife SOS (@WildlifeSOS) July 16, 2025

Videos of trained rescuers can create another problem: making snake handling look easier than it is.

“It is the experience of the rescuer and the way they handle the situation that makes the difference,” Raj explains. “A snake can still be dangerous even when it appears calm.”

The safest response is therefore distance, observation and a trained rescue service where one is available.

Now the response has changed

When organised snake rescue was still developing in Delhi, he recalls, people often called the police when a snake appeared. By the time a trained rescuer reached the location, the animal could already have been killed.

That response has not disappeared entirely. But awareness and access to trained rescuers have changed what happens in many encounters.

“Wildlife rescue has come a long way from that situation,” Raj says. “People are now willing to wait for two or three hours for a trained rescuer to arrive.”

Awareness has also spread beyond social media.

“There are still many people who do not use social media and depend on newspapers,” he says. “They see photographs and reports about rescue work, save the numbers and call when they encounter a snake.”

A snake that is not cornered or handled unnecessarily is less likely to be provoked into defensive behaviour.

But avoiding a snake is only one part of the problem. The other begins when a person is bitten.

The real emergency

Snakebite envenoming is treatable, but treatment is time-sensitive.

The WHO has identified access to effective treatment and stronger health systems as central to reducing snakebite deaths. Its global strategy aims to halve snakebite-related deaths and disability by 2030.

India’s National Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Snakebite Envenoming, launched in March 2024, similarly focuses on surveillance, healthcare capacity, emergency services, antivenom access, training and community awareness.

But the problem is that the people at greatest risk may also be the furthest from timely treatment.

For a person bitten in a remote village in India, the hospital might exist somewhere in the district. So whether the person can reach a facility with trained staff and appropriate treatment quickly enough is the concern.

“The most important thing is reaching a hospital on time,” Raj says. “You cannot waste time after a snakebite.”

That is why snakebite cannot be reduced to a story about snakes.

It is also a story about roads, transport, health facilities, awareness and data.

Awareness is important because we have the myths

There is a belief that snakes drink milk. But snakes are not milk-drinking animals.

“Snakes are reptiles, and they cannot digest milk,” Raj says. “They are carnivores. They feed on other animals; milk is not part of their natural diet.”

So why might a snake appear to drink milk?

“If you keep a snake without water for 10 or 20 days and then place it in a liquid, it may consume that liquid because it is extremely dehydrated,” Raj explains. “It is responding to the availability of fluid, not specifically choosing milk; it can consume soft drinks also.”

“The snake is looking for fluid because it is dehydrated, but milk can harm it because it is not something the snake is equipped to digest,” Raj says.

Don’t let it slide…

The 2026 PLOS Medicine study notes that snakebite data remain scarce and uneven across countries, and that modelling is necessary because many cases are never captured by formal systems.

For India, the challenge is therefore twofold.

People need to know how to avoid dangerous encounters and seek treatment quickly. At the same time, snakes need not be treated as intruders simply because they have crossed an invisible human boundary.

We need to understand why they happen, reduce the conditions that bring snakes unnecessarily close to people, leave wildlife handling to trained rescuers, discard myths that harm animals and make sure that when a venomous bite does occur, medical treatment is not delayed.

Sources:

Standard treatment guidelines-Management Of Snake Bite: By Ministry Of Health & Family Welfare Government Of India 

Snake Bite First Aid: The Dos and Don'ts: Wildlife SOS

What if your food waste could power a village, or even an electric vehicle?

In Kanjirangal, Tamil Nadu, biodegradable waste is being converted into biogas and electricity, helping power streetlights and battery-powered vehicles while also producing nutrient-rich manure. Instead of sending food waste to landfills, this model turns it into a useful resource.

From biogas plants and sustainable villages to electric mobility and circular economy solutions, Kanjirangal shows how waste can become part of the solution. Food waste becomes energy, and the leftover material can return to the soil as manure.

It’s a simple idea with a powerful message: what we call waste could still have a second life. Could your city turn food waste into clean energy too?

#WasteToEnergy #FoodWaste #Biogas #Renewableenergy #WasteManagement #SustainableVillage #organicwaste
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This article has been published in partnership with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC India).

At first light, the bamboo leaves are still wet with the night’s moisture when Leelamani H.G. steps onto a small patch of land in Karnataka’s Shivamogga district. It is only 0.37 acres, but the land was once a degraded patch that gave her little reason to return.

Hundreds of kilometres away, in the rubber country of Kanyakumari, the light is barely in when K.M. Thomas walks into his plantation and begins the day's work among the trees. Here, the first cut of the day is part of a routine he has known since childhood.

Bamboo and rubber may have little in common beyond coming from trees. 

Yet for Leelamani and Thomas, the plantations are small pieces of land being managed as livelihoods, assets and long-term investments, and also as part of a system that asks a more demanding question of the people who grow forest-based products: can responsible forestry work at the scale of a small farm?

For decades, certification has seemed like a system designed for larger forest estates and organised producers. Yet much of India's forest-based landscape is managed in smaller units like family plantations, home gardens, farms, community forests, and scattered plots. 

Many smallholders have long followed practices shaped by experience and local knowledge, but have had limited access to markets or the systems needed to demonstrate how their land is managed.

That is where the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) enters the picture.

FSC is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting responsible forest management worldwide. Its certification framework is intended to ensure that forests are managed in environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable ways.

In India, it works with forest owners, smallholders, businesses and communities to encourage sustainable forestry practices, protect biodiversity and strengthen rural livelihoods.

But a certification logo on a product begins much earlier than the point of sale. It begins on the land.

From a small patch to a new livelihood

For 55-year-old Leelamani H.G., the starting point was one acre of agricultural land in H Kallukoppa village under Purappemane Gram Panchayat in Hosanagara taluk, Shivamogga district, Karnataka.

She and her husband grew areca nut, but the income was seasonal. To supplement it, she also took up local catering work.

“Managing a small piece of agricultural land and depending mainly on areca nut meant that our income was limited and depended on the agricultural cycle. We had only one acre, so there was not much scope to increase our earnings from the existing land. That is why I was also doing catering work. I was looking for another opportunity that could give us an additional and more sustainable source of income.”, Leelamani tells The Better India.

The constraint was not the size of the farm. It was what that size allowed her to earn from it.

An opportunity arrived in 2022, when the Industree team came to her village to speak to farmers about bamboo cultivation.

She had a 0.37-acre patch of degraded land that was not productive. Instead of leaving it unused, she decided to plant bamboo.

“With a small farm, you cannot always depend on agriculture, but I wanted to see whether we could make better use of the land we had. When I heard about the bamboo plantation opportunity, I felt it could give us another source of income in the future.

She decided to take up the plantation on that patch.

The change, she says, was also psychological.

“Taking up bamboo cultivation gave me the confidence to make that decision and try something different on our land.”

Today, around 60 healthy bamboo clumps stand on that patch.

“I feel more confident about making decisions regarding the land. When I started, it was a small patch that was not giving us any productive return. Today, there are around 60 healthy bamboo clumps growing there. Seeing that transformation has given me confidence that even a small farmer can make use of underutilised land and create another livelihood opportunity.”

In 2025, Leelamani became part of the FSC-FM Group Certification. Her journey shows how a global standard can travel all the way down to a smallholding, giving farmers like her the tools to turn modest parcels of land into recognised, productive and more sustainable sources of livelihood. 

Making a global standard work locally

A certificate may carry a global standard, but meeting that standard happens on the ground. 

To understand how certification can work for India's smallholders, The Better India spoke to Dr Suresh Gairola, India Country Director of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

A former Indian Forest Service officer, Dr Gairola has more than four decades of experience in forest management. He has served as Director General of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education and Additional Director General of Forests (Wildlife), among other roles.

“Global standards with local relevance” is what Dr Gairola says India needs.

FSC's framework has 10 Principles and 70 Criteria covering areas such as legal compliance, workers' rights, communities, biodiversity and forest monitoring. But applying these requirements to thousands of small farms is different from applying them to a large plantation.

This is where group certification helps.

Several small farms can be covered under one FSC certificate. Farmers continue to own and manage their land, while a Group Entity handles common systems for training, monitoring, documentation and compliance.

This means smallholders do not have to manage the entire certification process on their own. They get support while continuing to make decisions about their own land.

For India, Dr Gairola says, the system also needs to reflect the size of its farms. “India's situation is unique because here average land holding is 1-2 hectares and in other countries smallholders could have 200-300 hectares. So we have to understand naturally the requirements of large numbers of small holders.”

That difference in scale is central to making certification accessible. In India, responsible forestry has to work across thousands of smaller plots, with systems that can support farmers rather than treating them like large plantation owners. “India has a dedicated FSC certification standard for smallholder plantations less than 20 hectares. This is a much simplified version with ease of understanding, compliance and audit” he informs.

A plantation that follows the supply chain

In Kerala and neighbouring Kanyakumari district, the crop is rubber.

For 71-year-old K M Thomas, rubber cultivation began in childhood. His parents owned a small rubber estate, and the experience stayed with him even through two decades of professional work in Saudi Arabia.

“From childhood, I knew about rubber and plantations and how they were working with them,” he tells The Better India.

After retiring, Thomas returned to India and began looking at investment possibilities around Kanyakumari.

“I realised that if I invested in land and a rubber plantation, it would be safe for my retirement time,” he says.

Today, Thomas manages about 15 acres of mature rubber plantation at Bethel Estate in Manali, Kanyakumari district. The latex is supplied to New Ambadi Estate under an agreement. He also has about 30 acres at Green Land/Green Valley Estate in Kannan Kuzhi, planted in 2021 with around 5,000 rubber plants. 

He expects those trees to be ready for tapping in 2028.

For Thomas, plantation management has become a long-term exercise in record-keeping and oversight.

“In the beginning of the rubber plantation, until we start tapping, we have to take care of the trees,” he explains. “After that, only manuring the trees and taking care of the estate is needed, and we can have an income for a long time.”

He regularly visits the plantation, checks the work and follows plantation activities.

“All the proper records are maintained, labour records, harvesting logs, pesticide usage, managing corrective action, and the CIP, the Continuous Improvement Process,” he says.

For Thomas, even the planting material is part of that decision-making process.

“I strongly believe that sampling from Ambadi is more healthy,” he says, referring to the nursery's selection of seeds, monitoring of plant growth and removal of plants when problems are detected.

When trees become part of the farm

Further west, in Vaghnera village of Ukai taluka, Tapi district, Mohanbhai Sambhai Gamit has taken a different approach.

His farm combines eucalyptus with paddy. He manages about five acres of eucalyptus plantations spread across different locations while continuing normal agricultural cultivation. He also sells milk to a local dairy and makes and sells organic fertiliser.

“I have planted eucalyptus along with normal farming. I have merged the two,” he tells The Better India.

The approach means the trees are not simply replacing food crops. They form one part of a wider agricultural and livelihood system.

“I also use organic fertilizer on my farm, and I make it and sell it in the open market,” he says.

FSC certification, he says, gave him a clearer understanding of what happens beyond the farm.

“After FSC certification, there is a supply chain, and we have understood more about how that supply chain works,” he says.

For Mohanbhai, the intervention has also translated into an improvement in income.

“There has been almost a 30–40% jump,” he says.

His experience shows why certification does not by itself create a livelihood, but the systems around it can help farmers understand production practices, supply chains and the requirements associated with reaching responsible markets.

The people behind the certificate

Across Karnataka, Kerala and Gujarat, the crops are different. So are the circumstances in which these farmers entered forestry.

Leelamani began with a degraded patch of land. Thomas returned to rubber after retirement. Mohanbhai incorporated trees into an existing farming system.

Yet their experiences point to the same shift.

Certification can turn the day-to-day decisions made by people managing small parcels of land into something that can be documented, monitored and recognised within a larger market system.

The impact, therefore, is not only the certificate itself. It is the knowledge and systems that smallholders build around it.

A bigger forest story

Dr Gairola sees the issue against a larger environmental  crisis.

“Urban and industrial emissions are one of the key reasons behind the problem of increasing greenhouse gases and climate change . Trees remain one of the best options because as they grow, they absorb carbon. Even when a tree is cut, the carbon remains locked in the wood for years. Trees also act like sponges and help improve the groundwater table. So we have to keep talking about the nitty-gritties, but explain them in an easy way. What we need to aim for is a global standard with local relevance and mainstreaming sustainability as a way of life.”

That final phrase captures the challenge.

India has a large number of small and marginal landholders. Bringing them into responsible forest-management systems cannot rely on the same approach used for a large plantation with a single owner.

And that is where the importance of certification lies.

For Leelamani, it meant looking at a degraded 0.37-acre patch differently. For Thomas, it meant following plantation work and latex beyond the trees themselves. For Mohanbhai, it meant understanding how his eucalyptus and paddy farm fitted into a larger supply chain.

The impact of responsible forestry is therefore measured not only in hectares certified, but in whether the people working those hectares have the tools, knowledge and market access to manage them for the long term.

The stamp matters. It is ultimately about creating value at both ends: plantation owners adopt more sustainable practices, while manufacturers reward responsible production with stronger market opportunities and additional financial benefits.

To know more about FSC certification in India, visit  https://asiapacific.fsc.org/fsc-india or write to india@fsc.org. 

All pictures: FSC

Every Sunday in Zemithang, Arunachal Pradesh, families gather the waste they have collected through the week and bring it out for sorting.

By then, much of the work has already happened at home.

Plastic has been kept separate from glass. Metal has been sorted out. Recyclable waste has been washed and dried before it reaches the community collection point.

Across 27 villages, around 6,000 people are now part of this routine. Together, they have helped recover nearly 90 tonnes of waste.

The effort is part of the Himalayan Fringes Project, co-founded by Merwyn Coutinho and Rajiv Rathod as an initiative of Further & Beyond Foundation. The wider project has now reached more than 20,000 people, with a waste-management system that begins inside people’s homes and depends on the community to keep it running.

The sorting starts at home

In Zemithang, conventional door-to-door waste collection is difficult to organise.

Villages are scattered across challenging Himalayan terrain, and even moving waste from one point to another can become a logistical task.

So the system begins before the waste leaves home.

Families store their waste, clean it and separate it. On designated community collection days, they bring it to collection points, where it is sorted further.

And the segregation goes far beyond the familiar wet-and-dry categories. Waste is separated into 22 categories, including plastic, glass and metal.

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That careful sorting matters because once different materials are mixed or contaminated, much of what could have been recycled becomes harder to recover. Keeping waste clean and separate gives more of it a chance to enter the recycling chain.

Across the wider Himalayan Fringes model, these community collection days are known as Swachhata Diwas (cleanliness days). Residents gather with sacks of household waste and sort what they have collected at designated points.

What begins as a task inside individual homes becomes a shared village routine every Sunday.

Why every family pays Rs 50

There is also a small financial contribution built into the system.

Each household contributes Rs 50 towards waste management. The money helps sustain the collection and movement of the material instead of placing the entire responsibility on an outside agency.

Women riders are also part of this chain.

Once households have segregated their waste, the riders collect the material and transport it towards a recycling centre.

In remote Himalayan settlements, that journey can be a challenge in itself. Recyclable material may have to travel long distances before reaching a facility that can process it.

This makes segregation at source especially important.

A bottle, packet or piece of metal that has been cleaned and separated has a much better chance of moving further through the recycling system than the same material mixed into a bag of household waste.

From one village to 6,000 people

The Himalayan Fringes Project began by experimenting with community-led ways of managing waste in mountain settlements.

A pilot in Chullyu showed how households could take responsibility for segregating their waste before it left their homes, while the community worked together to collect and move it onwards.

From there, the model expanded into other Himalayan communities.

Today, the Zemithang effort covers 27 villages and around 6,000 people.

The impact of thousands of households repeating these small actions can now be measured in tonnes.

Nearly 90 tonnes of waste have been recovered through the initiative so far.

In August alone, 1,479 kg of waste was responsibly managed, roughly the weight of five adult female yaks.

For communities spread across a difficult mountain landscape, that figure represents hundreds of households choosing to sort what they discard instead of allowing it to simply pile up or disappear into the surroundings.

Where does mountain waste go?

In a city, a bag of rubbish can disappear from view once a collection truck takes it away.

For a remote mountain community, the question of where that waste goes is harder to answer.

These villages do not have access to the same collection infrastructure available in large urban centres. At the same time, plastic packaging, bottles, metal and other discarded material can accumulate in settlements and eventually make their way into the surrounding landscape.

The system in Zemithang tries to intervene much earlier, while the waste is still inside people’s homes.

There is no complicated technology at the centre of it.

Instead, the model depends on thousands of people doing a few basic things consistently: keeping what they discard, washing and separating it carefully, contributing towards the system, and coming together every Sunday to make sure the waste goes where it should.

A weather forecast tells you it might rain. But this technology tells you which village, which farm and which dam needs to be ready when it does.

When Cyclone Montha struck Andhra Pradesh, hyperlocal alerts had gone out a week in advance, helping authorities plan evacuations before landfall. Built on satellites, radars, sensors and AI, this digital public infrastructure is making climate information something communities can actually use.

If you have a working, tech-led solution, share your innovation with us. You could help shape the future of tech policy and governance across India. Write to us at frontiertech@thebetterindia.com, or register at frontiertech@niti.gov.in

In partnership with @nitiaayogofficial ’s Frontier Tech Hub (NITI-FTH).

#ClimateTech #AIForGood #WeatherForecast #metWISE

Music Credits:
“Watch The World Burn” licensed via Music Vine: DJKLDR0RGEUCYMSS

This story is part of “India Invented This?” — The Better India’s weekly trivia series that uncovers the Indian minds, ideas and innovations behind inventions that have shaped the way we live. From ingenious solutions created by scientists and engineers to technologies developed in response to some of India’s biggest challenges, each story goes beyond the invention to explore the problem it solved, the impact it created and why it still matters today. 

On a foggy winter morning, a road can disappear from view within minutes. Cars slow down, headlights come on, and even familiar turns suddenly feel uncertain.

Now imagine being 700 feet above the ground, trying to land an aircraft when the runway ahead is hidden behind a thick veil of fog.

So, when the sky turns unclear, how do planes know where to land?

The answer, in part, lies in a piece of Indian technology called Drishti — a homegrown runway visibility measuring system that helps pilots and air traffic controllers know just how much of the runway can actually be seen.

And behind this technology is aerospace scientist Dr Shubha Venkatesha Iyengar, who spent more than four decades at the CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), working on technologies designed to make flying safer in difficult weather.

Giving runways a pair of eyes

Fog, rain, dust and smog can make the final moments of a flight particularly challenging. Pilots need to know the Runway Visual Range (RVR), essentially, how far down the runway they can see.

That is where Drishti comes in.

The system uses a transmitter and receiver placed about 30 metres apart. A beam of light travels between them, and the system measures how much that light is scattered or absorbed by particles in the atmosphere. From this, it calculates visibility and sends real-time information to pilots and air traffic controllers.

In dense fog, visibility can fall below 25 metres. On a clear day, it can stretch beyond 2,000 metres. Drishti is designed to measure across this wide range, giving aviation teams a clearer picture of conditions on the ground.

It may sound like a small task, but in aviation, a few metres of visibility can make a meaningful difference.

An Indian answer to an Indian problem

Before Drishti, Indian airports largely depended on imported transmissometers for runway visibility measurements. These systems were expensive and could be difficult to maintain.

Dr Shubha and her team at NAL set out to build an indigenous alternative that could withstand the weather conditions Indian airports regularly encounter.

The result was a system that was not only developed to meet international aviation standards, but was also significantly more affordable than comparable imported equipment. Its components could be serviced locally, making maintenance easier too.

Drishti was first deployed at airports including Delhi, Kolkata and Lucknow around 2014. By early 2026, the system had been installed at more than 100 locations across India, including civilian airports and Indian Air Force bases. Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport became the first Indian airport to be fully equipped with the indigenous system across all its runways.

The woman behind the technology

For Dr Shubha, this work was part of a much longer journey in science.

The youngest of nine siblings, she studied at Central College, where she topped both her BSc and MSc before going on to earn a PhD. Her father encouraged her to pursue science at a time when relatively few women entered the field.

In 1974, she joined the National Aerospace Laboratories in Bengaluru.

Over the next four decades, she worked on aviation technologies addressing some very practical problems — including fog, rain, and poor visibility that can affect aircraft operations. She eventually served as a Distinguished Scientist and headed NAL's Airport Instrumentation division.

Her work is a reminder that some of India's most consequential innovations are not always the ones we see.

Sometimes, innovation is simply about helping someone see a little farther.

With Drishti, that someone could be a pilot approaching a runway on a foggy morning, with hundreds of passengers waiting to arrive safely.

In 2026, Dr Shubha's contribution to aerospace engineering and aviation safety was recognised with the Padma Shri. But perhaps the most fitting tribute to her work is already built into the skies above India: when visibility falls, her technology helps bring clarity back to the runway.

Sources:

'Who is Dr. Shubha V Iyengar? Meet the unsung Indian hero who guides thousands of flights through fog everyday by giving runaways 'Drishti'' by The Times of India, Published on 10 February 2026.

'Aerospace scientist Shubha Venkatesha Iyengar awarded Padma Shri for aviation safety technology' by Eashan Kumar, Published on January 26, 2026 

1 Plant, 100 Uses explores the many ways familiar Indian plants, leaves, fruits and trees have been part of everyday life — from food and farming to homes, traditions and natural remedies. Each story takes one plant and uncovers the surprising ways people have found it useful, often across generations.

For generations, the neem tree has been part of everyday life across India.

It grows beside homes, along roads, around farms, and in village commons. Its shade is welcome in summer. People use its leaves at home, its twigs as natural toothbrushes, its seeds for oil, and its wood for everyday products.

The scientific name of neem is Azadirachta indica. The tree is native to the Indian subcontinent and has been used for centuries in agriculture, traditional medicine, household practices, and rural livelihoods.

The National Research Council’s book on neem documents uses for almost every part of the tree, from its leaves and seeds to its bark, flowers, fruit, and wood.

That is what makes neem special. It is not just a tree with one useful product. Its different parts have found different purposes.

The leaves protect more than they shade

Neem leaves are perhaps the part most familiar to Indian households.

People have traditionally placed dried leaves among stored grains and clothes to deter insects. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research has also documented the use of dried neem leaves, neem kernel powder and neem oil in grain storage.

The leaves can also be made into extracts used in agriculture.

One of neem’s best-studied compounds is azadirachtin, which is found mainly in the seeds. It affects insects by interfering with feeding, growth, and development. Neem-based products are therefore used as part of integrated pest management.

A fallen neem leaf, in other words, can have a second life beyond the tree.

The seed becomes oil

When the neem fruit ripens, its seeds can be collected and pressed to produce neem oil.

The oil has traditionally been used for making soaps, cosmetics, and other household products. It is also an important source of compounds used in botanical pest control.

Farmers can use neem-based formulations to manage several crop pests. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research has documented neem and azadirachtin-based products as part of integrated pest management.

The same seed can therefore serve both the household and the farm.

What remains becomes neem cake

Oil extraction does not end the story.

The solid material left after pressing neem seeds is called neem cake. It can be added to soil as an organic input and is also used in agriculture to help manage certain soil pests.

This creates a simple cycle.

The seed gives oil.

The leftover cake returns to the soil.

For farmers, very little of the seed needs to be treated as waste.

A twig becomes a toothbrush

Long before plastic toothbrushes became common, neem twigs were used for cleaning teeth.

A small branch can be chewed at one end until it becomes fibrous, creating a natural brush. Neem has also been used in traditional oral care preparations.

Scientific research has examined neem’s antimicrobial properties and its potential role in oral hygiene. But traditional use should not be taken to mean that neem products can replace established dental treatment.

Still, the practice tells us something about how closely the tree was once woven into everyday routines.

A branch growing outside the house could become part of the morning ritual.

The bark and flowers have uses too

The plant’s usefulness does not stop with its leaves and seeds.

The bark has featured in traditional systems of medicine and has also been studied for its chemical compounds.

Its small white flowers have been used in traditional food and medicinal preparations. They also provide nectar for bees. The National Research Council notes neem as a source of nectar for honey production.

The fruit itself surrounds the seed that produces neem oil, making it an important part of the tree’s natural cycle.

Neem has a place in farming

Perhaps the most important modern use of neem is in agriculture.

Neem-based products can help farmers manage pests without relying only on conventional chemical pesticides. Azadirachtin works differently from many conventional insecticides, affecting insect feeding, growth, and reproduction.

Neem products have been studied against several agricultural pests and are used in integrated pest management.

Neem cake also has a role in soil management.

This makes the tree useful at several stages of farming, from protecting crops to improving the soil after harvest.

The oil becomes soap and more

Neem oil has been used in India for making soap for decades.

The National Research Council records its use in laundry soaps, speciality soaps, and other products. Today, neem oil and leaf extracts can also be found in a range of personal care products, including soaps, creams, shampoos, and hair products.

Some of these products draw on traditional uses, while others are marketed for specific cosmetic properties. The presence of neem in a product, however, does not by itself prove that every health claim associated with it is scientifically established.

Even the wood has a purpose

Neem is also a timber tree.

Its wood has been used for furniture, construction, and other wooden products. Older trees can therefore continue to be useful even after they are no longer producing as much fruit.

Branches and woody material can also be used as fuel.

The tree’s usefulness can therefore continue through several stages of its life.

Nothing needs to end with the harvest

What makes neem important is not one particular use.

It is the chain.

Leaves can be used in traditional household practices and agricultural preparations. Seeds can be pressed for oil. The residue becomes neem cake. Twigs can be used for oral cleaning. Flowers provide nectar for bees. Bark has traditional uses. Wood can become furniture or fuel.

Even fallen leaves eventually decompose and return organic matter to the soil.

For generations, people have looked at the whole tree rather than only the part they needed. That is perhaps the real lesson of neem. Its value lies not in one spectacular use, but in how many ordinary uses can come from a single tree.

When Fauzia Shaikh arrived in Kutch between 3 and 7 September, she expected to see Banni after the monsoon: seasonal ponds holding water, grass spreading across the plains, and Banni buffaloes moving through the grasslands.

Instead, she found a landscape still waiting for rain.

“It was supposed to have a lot of vegetation by now because it was the monsoon,” Shaikh tells The Better India. “It should have been a wetland by now. But it was still just land with almost no vegetation.”

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A post shared by Fauzia | Slow Traveller 🏔️ (@travelwithfauzia)

The absence of water was visible everywhere. Ponds had dried up. Rivers and seasonal water sources had receded. Grass, which sustains Banni’s pastoral economy, had barely appeared.

A monsoon that did not arrive

By early September, Kutch had received only around 29–30% of its normal seasonal rainfall, with some talukas receiving barely a tenth of what they usually get.

On 2 September, the district was already reporting a rainfall deficit of about 60%. By 13 September, the deficit had widened to around 70%, with just 149.7 mm of rain recorded against a normal 499.8 mm.

The consequences reached agriculture first.

Around 4.82 lakh hectares were cultivated this year, but only about 1.8 lakh hectares had irrigation. The cultivated area itself had fallen sharply from roughly 6.5 lakh hectares the previous year. For farmers who managed to sow their fields, the prolonged dry spell left crops struggling for moisture.

But Banni’s pastoral communities face a different calculation.

Their fields are the grasslands. Their harvest is livestock.

And their water sources have to work across a landscape where groundwater is often saline.

When the grass disappears

Shaikh travelled through villages and settlements, where she saw how the dry landscape was affecting both livestock and the people who depend on them.

“I actually saw that there was no water in the ponds,” she says. “The rivers were dried up too.”

Vegetation was sparse. Shaikh mainly noticed gando baval, or Prosopis juliflora, an invasive species, and pilu, a native plant whose twigs are traditionally used as natural toothbrushes.

“Gando baval does not really help in this situation because animals and cattle do not eat it,” she says.

For Maldhari families, the lack of grass creates a chain reaction.

Animals need more purchased fodder. Fodder becomes expensive. Livestock produce less milk. Families then have less milk to sell.

“The cattle are not producing enough milk because it has not rained and there is no grass,” Shaikh says.

She says dry fodder that had earlier cost around Rs 6 per kg was selling for about Rs 12 per kg in retail markets.

The problem, then, is not just a shortage of water. It is also the loss of the grass that supports pastoral livelihoods.

And this is where Banni’s traditional water systems offer an important lesson.

The water is there, but not always where you expect it

For generations, Maldharis in Banni have used virdas — shallow wells dug into the beds of seasonal ponds and natural depressions.

A virda begins with an understanding of how Banni holds rainwater.

During the monsoon, rainwater collects in shallow depressions and seasonal ponds. Some of that water seeps through the soil, creating relatively fresh layers above deeper saline groundwater.

Maldharis have traditionally identified these places through knowledge passed down across generations. They dig shallow wells into the freshwater layer and construct them using locally available materials.

“The virdas are becoming very few and far between,” says Varun Suchday, a travel journalist and researcher from Kutch who has spent considerable time travelling through the region and documenting its pastoral and nomadic communities. “Their use and even their construction is rapidly declining.”

This year, some new virdas are being dug again, he says, but there is no guarantee that they will yield usable water.

“Not every virda gives you sweet water. This is a salty terrain, so a lot of the virdas just bring out saline water and are of no use.”

But virdas are not the only traditional water sources that matter here. Suchday points to dhands, saucer-shaped seasonal water bodies that dot Kutch.

“There are around 44 or 45 dhands across Kutch. All these animals, and even humans, depend on these dhands for water.”

This year, however, the water disappeared faster.

“Because of the hotter-than-normal summer, especially May and June, these dhands dried faster,” he says. “The grass also dried faster than normal.”

Citing reports, he says milk production fell by around 30% in May and 50% in June, with further declines reported later.

“I look at these small changes as indicators of climate stress,” he says. “When milk production drops like this, that is also a sign of what the animals and the landscape are going through.”

An ecologist’s perspective

Virdas have a role, but they cannot provide everything people need. Ecologist Chetan Misher says it is important to understand what they were actually designed to provide.

“Virdas are an ancient system, but I don't think they have failed,” he tells The Better India. “They are more or less the same as they were before. But they were actually never a source of fresh water in the way we understand fresh water.”

The difference lies in what communities have historically called “fresh” water.

“For us, fresh water is something we drink,” Misher explains. “But for the locals, fresh water means something that is not too bad, something that is not completely undrinkable. It is not necessarily as good as the water we drink in cities or elsewhere.”

In Banni’s saline terrain, the water available through a virda can still contain considerable salt and particulate matter. Misher describes it as “very muddy water” and says its relative usability has historically been defined by what other options were available.

New Blog - Jheel and Virdas – The Indigenous and the resilient water system of Banni Landscape in Kutch, India.@JalShaktiAbhyan @MoJSDoWRRDGR #janshakti4jalshakti #JalJeevanMission #JalShaktiAbhiyan #मैं_हूँ_पानी @indiawater @Indian_Rivers @WaterYouthNet https://t.co/2lkapWSncC pic.twitter.com/kn3TEvI5So

— Paani Wali Baat (@paaniwalibaat) September 28, 2019

“They found it fresh because the alternative they had was even worse than that,” he says.

That history, he argues, should not become a reason to romanticise the system or treat it as an adequate substitute for potable water today.

“A virda has always been there. It helps people survive, but it does not let them thrive,” Misher says.

This does not mean abandoning virdas. They remain a locally understood, decentralised water source, particularly in a landscape where livestock and pastoral communities need water close to where they live and graze.

But Misher believes the bigger priority now is to ensure that people have access to water that is genuinely safe to drink. He also adds that land degradation due to invasive species has negatively affected groundwater in the region, putting additional pressure on virdas.

“People were never adapted to that water,” he says. “You need to provide them better, drinkable water through a pipeline or through a tanker, or whatever means can provide potable water.”

“Cattle and people are drinking the same water,” Misher points out. “It is a very dangerous situation.”

Historically, this may have been unavoidable. Banni is an extremely dry landscape, and during periods without rainfall, communities had few alternatives. But the same constraints need not determine the future.

That makes reliable water infrastructure particularly important during a year when traditional sources are under pressure.

The pipeline is only useful if the water keeps flowing

Some Banni settlements already have piped-water connections. But a pipeline alone does not guarantee a dependable supply.

For water infrastructure to work during drought, the supply needs to be regular, functional and able to withstand prolonged periods of water stress.

The way forward need not be about choosing between traditional and modern systems. The goal is not to discard an old system because it is old, or preserve it simply because it is traditional.

Instead, it is about understanding what each system can realistically provide, recognising its limits and building the infrastructure needed to address those gaps.

Sources:

‘Government call on drought declaration only after survey: Gujarat minister on Opp demand’: By Parimal A Dabhi, 12 September 2026

‘15 Districts in Gujarat Rain Deficient in Monsoon 2026 So Far’: By DeshGujarat, Published on 2 September 2026

‘Rainfall Where It Was Needed Most: Kutch Gets Heavy Showers After 70% Deficit’: By DeshGujarat, Published on 15 September 2026

‘Kutch’s drought is drying more than fields; a livelihood and pastoral crisis is unfolding’: By Aseem Mishra, Published on 11 September 2026

‘As Kutch and Saurashtra teeter on the edge of drought, farmers demand release of Narmada water; however, there is a catch’: By Raju Sajwan, Published on 7 September  2026

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What started with people cleaning waste with their own hands has grown into a community movement. 🌱

Since 1 September 2018, Vinay Das and his team have worked every Sunday to clean public spaces and inspire people to take responsibility for their surroundings.

From Ashok Vihar to the Yamuna banks and the Munak Canal, volunteers have cleaned parks, lanes and polluted stretches—while also planting trees and caring for new saplings.

The movement has brought together more than 1,600 children and young people, with around 350 active volunteers.

Their recent work at the Munak Canal has made an even bigger impact. Across the last two cleanup drives, 50 metric tonnes of waste were removed, a figure also recorded in MCD’s official records.

But for Vinay, the biggest reward isn’t the number of tonnes removed.
It’s hearing a child say:
“Bhaiya, my lane is clean today. Maa is happy.” ❤️
And the mission goes beyond cleaning.

Vinay dreams of building a school for 1,500 children, where environmental protection becomes a part of how the next generation learns and lives.

Because real change can begin with something as simple as showing up every Sunday.

Know someone who is doing their bit for their community? Tag them below.

#MunakCanal #VinayDas #Delhi #CleanDelhi #CleanIndia #CivicSense #CommunityCleanup #WasteManagement #DelhiVolunteers #YouthVolunteers #EnvironmentalActivist #SwachhBharat #CommunityAction #Yamuna #Sustainability

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₹4,000 a month. 16 hours waiting outside a director’s house. And a dream of making it in the film industry. 🎬

Before becoming one of Tollywood’s most relatable stars, Nani faced the uncertainty and struggle that comes with trying to find a place in cinema.

From waiting for opportunities to reinventing himself through unconventional roles in films like Eega, Jersey and Dasara, Nani built a career defined by resilience, versatility and persistence.

Today, as he steps into The Paradise, his journey from Ghanta Naveen Babu to Natural Star Nani is a reminder that success in cinema is often built one opportunity at a time. 🌱

What part of Nani’s journey inspires you the most?

#Nani #NaturalStarNani #NaniJourney #Tollywood #TeluguCinema #IndianCinema #ActorJourney #FilmIndustry #NaniMovies #Eega #Jersey #Dasara #TheParadise #InspiringStories #SuccessStory

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At the Museum of Goa, Nilankur curates programs that cut too close. He encourages people to think and react. He is a columnist at O'Heraldo newspaper and contributes to various publications.

Ethan Xavier found his life's calling by looking down at the civilisations crawling beneath his feet. The beetle carrying a burden many times its size. The moth that appeared only after dusk. The ant trail that reorganised with precision. To most people, they were creatures to ignore. To Ethan, they were neighbours, engineers, farmers, architects and survivors.

"I feel calm when watching insects," he says. "They make me realise just how insignificant we are."

He is currently studying Science in Class 12 at Don Bosco School, Goa, after being homeschooled. His days are divided between school assignments, rehearsing with his band, and building an insect collection, which he is now documenting along with every insect he comes across.

When he was five, his pets were garden snails. Many children collect toys or chase footballs, but Ethan crouched beside plants, watching caterpillars feed or beetles disappear beneath the soil. Family members soon realised that the easiest way to make him happy was to buy him books about insects. 

Birthdays and Christmases slowly filled a shelf that he read cover to cover. Television became a classroom. National Geographic Wild, Animal Planet, documentaries narrated by the unmistakable voice of Sir David Attenborough. They expanded a universe that already seemed impossibly vast, and his fascination only deepened.

Ethan's story is about attention. Children have that gift, but adulthood slowly trains it out of us. We stop noticing birdsong, flowers, changing clouds, or insects resting on tree bark. Ethan somehow held on to that childhood instinct. He never stopped observing.

"I love just waiting and observing," he says. "In my daily life I say, 'Only when you stop can you see nature move.' That's pretty much what I'm always doing. Whether it's walking to the grocery store or just climbing the stairs, I wait, and look for insects."

The worms that turned out to be webspinners

That patience has paid off. One of his favourite finds was a group of about a dozen webspinners, rare and elusive insects that spin silky, web-like structures to nest in. "Even though I had read about them, when I first encountered them I was very sure they were some kind of worm," he recalls. "They produce the silk from specialised glands on their forelegs."

Another memory involves a creature that isn't technically an insect. On a walk with his mother, he came across a pill millipede. "Even though I knew it would curl up into a ball, seeing it happen in front of me for the first time was amazing," he says. "What made it even more memorable was how the millipede rolled down the slope we were walking on, and how I ran after it."

More recently, on a trip to Kerala, he saw both stick insects and tiger beetles in the wild on the same day, a first for him.

Over time, he came to understand that insects are among the most successful life forms on Earth. Bees, butterflies and moths pollinate the crops that feed humanity. Countless insects decompose fallen leaves, dead wood and food waste, returning nutrients to the soil. Others aerate the earth, disperse seeds, regulate pests and occupy nearly every link in the food chain. We depend on them. Remove insects, and entire ecosystems begin to collapse.

Still, Ethan pushes back on measuring their worth only by what they do for us. "Something that really annoys me is how we humans try to find a 'use' for everything," he says. "If we cannot find a use for something, we label it as useless. Not everything needs to have a human use to be useful in nature, and to be allowed to exist."

He is fascinated by how human civilisation has borrowed ideas from insects. Watching paper wasps chew wood into nests led an 18th-century French scientist to suggest that paper could be made from wood pulp. Engineers studying ants and bees have developed models of decentralised communication that are now used in robotics. Researchers continue to look to insects for breakthroughs in waste management, biomaterials and medicine. Yet although millions of insect species share the planet with us, science has documented only a fraction of them.

What Goa's insects are telling us

Goa has strengthened Ethan's conviction that insects tell stories larger than themselves. Every year, parts of the Western Ghats become galaxies as fireflies synchronise their flashes. Across grazing fields, dung beetles perform one of nature's least celebrated miracles, rolling and burying animal waste in a way that enriches soil, suppresses disease-carrying flies and keeps ecosystems working. In streams and backwaters, mayfly, caddisfly and damselfly larvae quietly monitor freshwater health. Their disappearance signals pollution long before laboratory reports arrive.

The challenge is that while scientific research grows richer, public attention grows shorter. Ethan recognises this paradox. In an age shaped by artificial intelligence and scrolling, few people will sit through ecological journals.

Rather than resist this, Ethan wants to work with it. Many of the lessons he carries today came from educators on digital platforms, who showed him that knowledge and engaging storytelling can exist together. For Ethan, film is where research, education and activism meet. A camera can turn an overlooked insect into a protagonist, replacing fear with fascination and indifference with wonder.

"Just like Sir David Attenborough, my dream is to travel the world documenting insects and bringing the wonders of the insect world into many people's living rooms," he says.

He imagines cities that learn from insects. Organic waste would disappear into colonies of black soldier fly larvae, producing nutrient-rich animal feed. Buildings would borrow from termite mounds to regulate temperature, reducing dependence on air conditioning. Artificial lighting would be more thoughtful, preserving dark skies where nocturnal insects can navigate without confusion.

Urban architecture would include spaces where insects can nest. Gardens would welcome leaf litter, fallen logs and patches of bare earth instead of removing every sign of wildness. Rooftops would become habitats. Schools would teach children ecology. Governments would invest more seriously in insect research, recognising that some of the smallest organisms may hold the largest solutions.

For now, the path ahead is clear. Ethan isn't part of a conservation organisation yet, but he hopes to join one once he finishes Class 12. He plans to study entomology, and perhaps specialise later.

Perhaps the future of conservation will be led by young people carrying cameras into forests, reminding us that humanity is inseparable from the creatures around it.

In teaching others to see them, Ethan offers something larger than knowledge. He offers hope that a generation raised amid artificial intelligence may still learn the oldest lesson of all: every living thing has a place in the story of our shared planet.

The celebrations were over, but at Dadar Chowpatty, the traces of Ganpati Visarjan remained. Flowers, pieces of cloth, plastic and decorative material were scattered along parts of the shoreline.

Instead of simply walking past the post-festival waste, more than 150 students from K.P.B. Hinduja College of Commerce stepped in to clean it up.

The students came together for a post-Visarjan beach clean-up, joining hands with the University of Mumbai, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Maharashtra State and the Coast Guard. For them, it was a way to extend the spirit of the festival beyond the celebrations and do their bit for the city they call home.

For second-year BAF student and DLLE student manager Ritika Kanojiya, the experience offered a perspective that a classroom could not.

“You can talk about the environment all day, but nothing hits like picking up that waste yourself.”

By the end of the cleanup, Ritika was tired, and her hands were dirty. But there was another reason the day felt special — it was her birthday.

“It was also my birthday, and I can't think of a better way to have spent it.”

Who cleans up after the crowds go home?

The clean-up was part of a wider National Service Scheme (NSS)-led initiative undertaken in collaboration with the University of Mumbai, BMC and the Coast Guard.

Throughout the drive, students covered several metres of the shoreline, collecting and segregating waste left behind after the immersion festivities. Their work included clearing flower offerings, plastic and other decorative materials, cloth and post-Visarjan debris from the beach.

For first-year BCom student and NSS volunteer Prajakta Kulkarni, it was her first time seeing the scale of the problem so closely.

“Before going there, I thought it would just be about picking up waste, but after reaching the beach, I understood how serious the problem of pollution actually is.”

The students collected plastic bottles, wrappers, bags and other waste from the shoreline, working alongside one another to clear the space.

For Prajakta, the experience also changed the way she looked at civic responsibility.

“The activity made me realise that keeping our environment clean is not only the responsibility of the government or cleaning workers. It is our responsibility too.”

The initiative brought home a simple point. Celebrations may last for a few days, but the responsibility of caring for the places where they are held continues long after.

What a few hours on the beach taught them 

Dr Navin M Punjabi, Principal, Hinduja College, believes that such initiatives can help students connect everyday actions with larger environmental concerns.

“Our responsibility as an educational institution is not limited to preparing students for their professional lives. We also want them to understand the role they can play as responsible citizens.”

Plastic and debris left on beaches don't stay there; they eventually make their way into the ocean, where they harm marine life and ecosystems that are already under stress from a warming planet. Drives like this help students see the direct link between everyday civic action and larger environmental challenges while giving them the opportunity to take meaningful action in their own city.

That connection is particularly important in a city like Mumbai, where beaches and other public spaces are shared by millions. Keeping them clean is not only the responsibility of civic authorities. Everyday choices, responsible disposal and community participation also form an important part of civic sense.

For third-year BCom student and NSS leader Sarvesh Dubey, that sense of responsibility is something students can pass on.

“As NSS volunteers, it is our responsibility to set an example for our juniors and inspire society as a whole. Today, we are taking this initiative; tomorrow, someone else may be inspired by us to take the same step.”

One morning was enough to change how they saw Mumbai

Hinduja College has been carrying out the beach clean-up initiative for more than 25 years. The NSS unit also organises beach-cleaning drives three to four times a year, alongside other community initiatives such as blood donation and tree plantation drives.

For the students taking part, however, the value of the exercise went beyond the number of bags collected.

Ritika believes that giving just a few hours can help people understand their own role in keeping public spaces clean.

“It takes just a couple of hours, and you walk away with something a classroom can't give you. You see that small efforts add up. If everyone gave one morning, our beaches would look very different.”

Prajakta too hopes to return for more such activities, this time with an experience she can share with others.

And perhaps that is where civic sense begins — not with one big gesture, but with people choosing to take responsibility for the spaces they share.

At Dadar Chowpatty, more than 150 students spent a morning doing exactly that, showing that even after the celebrations end, there is always a way to give back to the city.

All images courtesy of Diksha Talreja, Hinduja College