Villagers once burned the toxic waste as fuel, but a pioneering couple’s radical education model uses it much more creatively
Every morning, students in Assam’s Pamohi village go to school clutching a bag of plastic waste, in exchange for which they will get their day’s lessons.
Akshar School, founded by Mazin Mukhtar, 32, and his wife Parmita Sarma, 30, has turned its pupils into ecowarriors by waiving school fees and helping to stop local people burning used plastic.
Continue reading...Forest staff and villagers in the Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu hoisted an elephant out of the bottom of a well in an operation that took more than 12 hours. A farmer heard the cries of the elephant and alerted local authorities who arrived at the 55ft-deep (16.7-metre) well with a team of 50.
Despite the depth of the well, the water inside was shallow and was pumped out to make it easier to access the 25-year-old male elephant. Two excavators, trucks and a crane were used in the operation, which brought the elephant out unharmed.
The elephant will be released in the nearby Hosur forest area
Continue reading...Animal fell into well covered with bushes in village in Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri district
Forest officials in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state said they used a crane to pull an elephant from a well after working for more than 12 hours to rescue the animal.
The elephant, which strayed into a village bordering a forest in Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri district, fell into the well that was covered with bushes and did not have a fence or wall around it, Rajkumar, the district forest officer, said.
Continue reading...Stockpile sought for use in rebel-held territories, asylum camps and for others unlikely to receive vaccinations
Public health groups are lobbying countries to commit a portion of their Covid-19 vaccine supplies to a “humanitarian buffer” that would be used to inoculate people living in rebel-held territories, those in asylum-seeker camps and others unlikely to receive vaccinations from their governments.
The emergency stockpile is intended to act as a safety net to ensure the global effort to end the Covid-19 pandemic is not sabotaged by governments using vaccines as bargaining chip with restive populations, or simply denying it to some marginalised groups.
Continue reading...The Indian city is home to 20 million people but is also a place rich in biodiversity, with flamingos, leopards and black kites among its flora and fauna
An Indian Ocean humpback dolphin swims beneath an Indo-Pacific octopus close to the coast, a gargantuan atlas moth flutters above Sanjay Gandhi national park, while an Asian palm civet shins up a tree near Vasai Creek and a black kite soars over a banyan tree. All are part of a vibrant new map of Mumbai that showcases the Indian city’s rich biodiversity.
“Most people only think of Mumbai as a concrete jungle, with skyscrapers, slums and beach promenades, but scratch beneath the surface, and you will find a place of rich biodiversity,” says Rohan Chakravarty, an award-winning wildlife cartoonist from Nagpur famous for cartoons that deal with the environment, conservation and wildlife, and creator of the Mumbai map.
Continue reading...How do you learn from home without a laptop? Teachers are getting creative, but the pandemic remains a vast challenge
Vemula Deena lives in one of the tin huts strung along a narrow lane in the heart of Vijayawada, the business capital of Andhra Pradesh, in the south-east of India. Her parents are construction labourers. Vemula is 13 and wants to be a politician, enamoured of the spotless white kurta-pyjamas they wear and their public speaking.
But her school has closed its doors in the face of the Covid pandemic and gone online, effectively shutting her out. Vemula continues to practise her oration as she does her household chores.
Continue reading...The pandemic has pushed millions of urban poor into crisis – and left children struggling to help their families survive
Subhan Shaikh used to start the day with a cup of cinnamon-flavoured tea, brought to him by his mother, Sitara, before he got ready for school. But the lockdown in March brought her salary as a school bus attendant to an end, and providing food – never mind tea – for Subhan, 14, and his two younger sisters, became a challenge.
Today, life for Subhan revolves around tea, which has become a lifeline for his family. After seeing his mother struggle, Subhan decided to do something and became a tea seller on the streets of Mumbai.
Continue reading...The small Indian village of Thulasendrapuram burst into celebration after waking up to the news that Kamala Harris will become the first woman and the first person of south-Asian descent to become US vice-president. People set off firecrackers, played music and shared food in the village, where Harris's maternal grandfather was born. 'We take immense pride in her victory, and who she has become,' said one resident
US close to 10m cases, with India second on 8.5m cases, followed by Brazil and Russia
The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has passed 50 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, which showed that the US, India and Brazil have the highest figures.
A total of 50,052,204 infections had been reported around the world by Sunday evening.
Continue reading...Arnab Goswami’s arrest follows claims that his BJP-backing TV channel smears opponents
One of India’s most famous and polarising television journalists has been arrested in connection with a 2018 suicide case, escalating an ongoing feud between the conservative news anchor and the Maharashtra state government.
Arnab Goswami, the founder of the rightwing channel Republic TV, was arrested at his home in Mumbai early on Wednesday. It prompted a chorus of anger from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), including from the home affairs minister, Amit Shah, who called it a “blatant misuse of state power”.
Continue reading...Laeek Khan alleges he was duped by pair who even pretended to conjure up a genie
Two men who allegedly duped a doctor into buying an “Aladdin’s lamp” for more than £70,000 – even conjuring up a fake genie – have been arrested in India, according to officials.
Laeek Khan approached police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh after he realised the lamp did not have any magical powers, as described in the popular folk tale about Aladdin and his wish-granting genie that appears when it is rubbed.
Continue reading...A strikingly-designed centre reminiscent of Rajasthan’s famous forts will soon be opening its doors in conservative Jaisalmer
“Don’t even try,” friends told Michael Daube, when he said he wanted to coax women in Jaisalmer to embroider yoga bags to help them earn some income.
For the most part, at least in rural areas, this is Federico García Lorca territory, where marriage for a woman, as a character in the Spanish poet’s play Blood Wedding describes it, is “a man, children, and as for the rest a wall that’s two feet thick”. Rajasthan is one of the most conservative states in India, where ancient customs circumscribe a woman’s freedom and in turn any chance of economic independence.
Continue reading...Asafoetida is a mainstay of the country’s cuisine, but only now are the first saplings being planted on Indian soil
What’s in a name? Plenty, when it comes to asafoetida or “devil’s dung”. The evil-smelling spice is a stink bomb that unquestionably lives up to its moniker. Inhalation at five paces can make someone with a blocked nose stagger back. It has to be stored away from other spices to prevent it overwhelming them. Just a smidgen can cure indigestion. Yet it is a staple in Indian cuisine, adding a certain subtle aroma, pungency and flavour. For the Jain community, whose religion forbids the use of onion and garlic, “hing”, as it is called in India, is a lifesaver for the flavour it adds. Hing is India’s answer to Japan’s umami.
Yet, until now, no one in India has grown the spice.
Continue reading...Artisans preparing Hindu festival have responded creatively to the pandemic and its problems
Every autumn the streets of Kolkata come alive with the sounds of Durga Puja. The Hindu festival, which celebrates the triumph of good over evil, is marked in West Bengal and neighbouring states as a time for dancing, drumming, eating and worship.
Yet the festival’s most defining feature is the pandal – towering displays of religious sculptures depicting the story of Durga Puja: the moment that the Hindu goddess Durga triumphed over the demon Mahishasura.
Continue reading...After just four years’ training in India and some fast crowd-funding, Kamal Singh joins English National Ballet School
Kamal Singh did not even know what ballet was when he turned up nervously at the Imperial Fernando Ballet School, in Delhi, during the summer of 2016. But the 17-year-old, known as Noddy, whose father was a rickshaw driver in the west of the city, had been transfixed by ballet dancers in a Bollywood film, and wanted to try it for himself.
Four years on Singh is now one of the first Indian students to be admitted to the English National Ballet school. He started this week.
Continue reading...The government is being urged to dispel myths and ensure drugs are available – and take responsibility for the millions of stray dogs
By the time the patient, a young man, reached Dr Ramesh Masthi at a Bengaluru hospital, it was too late to save him. After being bitten by a pack of stray dogs as he went out to buy some milk, his family had applied a paste of green chillis, then lime juice and finally, when the wound looked gruesome, turmeric.
“He came about a week after he was bitten. The wound was serious, and we couldn’t save him. There is so much ignorance about dog bites and myths. A rabies shot in time would have saved him,” Masthi says.
Continue reading...Scientists identify a species that appears to absorb potentially lethal UV radiation and emit blue light
The might be tiny creatures with a comical appearance, but tardigrades are one of life’s great survivors. Now scientists say they have found a new species boasting an unexpected piece of armour: a protective fluorescent shield.
Related: Tardigrades: Earth’s unlikely beacon of life that can survive a cosmic cataclysm
Continue reading...Rural women in Tamil Nadu are mostly excluded from land ownership, but collective farms can offer self-sufficiency
When all the shops closed due to the coronavirus lockdown, small collectives were key to remaining self-sufficient for marginalised farmers in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu.
“We had sufficient grains and vegetables at home, while others in the village were seeking government support,” says 46-year-old Poongani, one of the widowed Dalit women among the nine members of the Sivanthi Poo farming collective in the village of Thottampatti.
Continue reading...Charities warn that seven months of the pandemic has set the country back decades on child exploitation
Over 70 children were crammed into a bus, heading from Bihar to a sweatshop in the Indian city of Rajasthan, when the authorities pulled it over. Among the faces half hidden behind colourful masks was 12-year-old Deepak Kumar.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Kumar had been enrolled in grade four at the school in his small district of Gaya in the impoverished Indian state of Bihar. But when Covid-19 hit and the country went into lockdown, the school gates shut across India and have not opened since. With his parents, both daily wage labourers, unable to make money and put food on the table, last month Kumar was sent out to find work.
Continue reading...Unions warn of further action over non-payment of rise agreed in 2018, as hundreds of Assam tea estates close
Over 400,000 workers on Indian tea plantations that supply the world’s largest tea companies have gone on strike over the government’s failure to implement a promised daily wage increase from £1.70 to £3.70 a day.
The past week has seen around 250 tea estates across the Assam region close, with the partial closure of a further 20.
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