Articles & Op-Eds

India could soon produce urea using little more than water, air, and sunlight. Urea is the fertiliser Indian farmers rely on most. While its widespread misuse has contributed to soil infertility and to air and water pollution, it is equally true that without urea, India would struggle to sustain food [...]

If even FIFA World Cup was forced to pause for heat, the myth that developed nations can manage climate change is over. They should recommit to deep emission cuts, transfer finances & tech to developing world. William Nordhaus was the poster child of the “global warming isn’t so bad” camp [...]

From Swachh Bharat to LiFE, the PM has given environmental agenda a distinctly Indian vocabulary rooted in Deendayal Upadhyaya’s integral humanism As Narendra Modi becomes India’s longest continuously serving elected Prime Minister, it is worth asking: What is his environmental philosophy, and what drives his environmentalism? This question has often [...]

Walk past a roadside eatery in Varanasi at six in the morning and you will see a familiar sight: the kettle on, the chulha glowing, and the first batch of puri-jalebi being prepared. What you may not notice is the smoke above it. Multiply that smoke by the lakhs of small commercial eateries across [...]

Producing green urea alone will not be sufficient. We must also optimise urea consumption, because urea is significantly overused in the country, polluting land, water and climate. The West Asia conflict has thrown a spotlight on India’s deep energy insecurity. What is less discussed is how this vulnerability affects our [...]

In an era of accelerating ecological crisis — of climate change, biodiversity loss, and deepening social inequities — we need more Gadgils: Thinkers with intellectual courage, moral clarity, and the willingness to engage with diverse views In the long arc of Indian history, only a handful of scientists have truly [...]

I have travelled extensively over the past three decades and never once fallen sick outside India — until my visit to Brazil last month for COP30. A simple viral infection ended up becoming a mirror, revealing how differently India and Brazil approach antibiotic use, and why this difference matters. In [...]

Every winter, Delhi’s air pollution debate follows a familiar script. We look for villains, argue over blame, ignore science and solutions. This year has been no different – except that it has bordered on the absurd. Pollution season opened with the Supreme Court allowing “green crackers”, followed by Delhi govt’s [...]

Across the world, antibiotics are viewed as curative medicines — to be used only when truly necessary. In India, they tend to be used preventively, routinely prescribed for viral infections that the human body is fully capable of handling. I have travelled extensively over the past three decades and never [...]

For more than a decade, Delhi has experimented with various pollution control measures — the ‘odd-even scheme’, smog towers, water cannon, tree plantation, the Graded Response Action Plan or GRAP, (which restricts industry, construction, and vehicular activity during winter), and now cloud seeding. Despite these efforts, the city continues to [...]

The world needs a new multilateral architecture for a new phase of climate action. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had declared the 30th Conference of Parties (COP30) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the “COP of truth”. And truth, indeed, was unmistakable in Belém. [...]

The 30th UN Climate Change Conference in Belem, Brazil, is taking place against the backdrop of a major pushback against climate action. The United States has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. The European Union has diluted its 2040 climate target. Some of the world’s largest banks—J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, [...]