In her new book, The Burning Forest: India’s War In Bastar, anthropologist Nandini Sundar provides a harrowing narrative of the toll this ongoing conflict has taken on the lives of Bastar’s Adivasis. Sundar demonstrates how the institutions of democracy have failed to address the human tragedy in what has become one of India’s most militarized regions….
Read More about Nandini Sundar: Militarization of the imagination
Image from an IISc study showing sharp (88%) decline in Bangalore's vegetation
Samar Halarnkar writes: In Nature in the City, her evocative exploration of Bangalore’s natural history, Harini Nagendra, says, “… residents engaged in practices such as placing a plate of warm rice (often with ghee added) outside to feed crows, leaving water baths for birds in the summer, and sugar and milk for ants and reptiles.”…
Read More about The end of nature: Why India is becoming a drier, hotter and angrier countryTrees operate on very different time-scales from the ones we are used to, both in terms of life-spans and in terms of how long it takes them to process information and translate it into action. Is this the main reason why we find it so difficult to recognise them as truly sentient beings, Wohlleben wonders….
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Representative pic
From Juggernaut publishing: There’s a hidden war going on in central India away from the headlines — and Bastar is at the centre of it. Sociologist Nandini Sundar, who has written about Bastar and its people for nearly three decades, has now authored a gripping account of the war between the Maoists and the State….
Read More about Bookshelf: The Burning Forest: India’s War in Bastar
Book excerpt: Both corporations and governments alike, who seek to consolidate their land ownership, often push for clearly defined tenurial rights rather than have to deal with messy overlapping custodianships. Many scholars have highlighted the limits of tenurial security in achieving conservation and that a tenure creates willing stakeholders in large scale land use change….
Read More about Bookshelf: Business Interests and the Environmental CrisisWe will soon have artificial intelligence that can accomplish professional human tasks. Our lives will be totally 100% tracked by ourselves and others. Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends already in motion, and are impossible to halt without halting civilization, says Internet pioneer Kevin Kelly….
Read More about Kevin Kelly on the 12 technological forces that will shape our future
Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh‘s non-fiction take on climate change and our collective inability to acknowledge its danger – titled The Great Derangement – has been hailed as a landmark, which promises to change the conversation around this crucial issue. In this series, we’re re-publishing interviews which feature the writer at his forceful and articulate best….
Read More about The Great Derangement: Conversations with Amitav Ghosh – 5Professor Immanuel Ness, author of Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class which has India, China and South Africa as case studies, spoke to The Wire on trade unions and labour laws in India, social relations between labour and capital in the global south, merits of spontaneity in workers’ agitations and much more….
Read More about Watch: Immanuel Ness on the ‘super-exploitation’ of contractual workers in India
A new book, The Great Invention by Ehsan Masood, unveils the genesis of the Gross Domestic Product and how it shaped the modern economic paradigm. It comes at a time when a growing number of people are questioning this flawed metric. Down to Earth magazine presents exclusive excerpts from the book, followed by a debate….
Read More about Debate: Is GDP a true and accurate measurement of growth?
Archival photo of a boat rally in protest against the Sardar Sarovar dam
The Narmada Bachao Andolan began 31 years ago as a protest against the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river, and went on to raise questions about the very development model India has embraced. Today, with the NBA reviving their landmark struggle for justice, we are re-publishing author Arundhati Roy’s landmark 1999 essay on the topic….
Read More about Flashback: Arundhati Roy’s classic essay on the Narmada resistance
Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh‘s non-fiction take on climate change and our collective inability to acknowledge its danger – titled The Great Derangement – has been hailed as a landmark, which promises to change the conversation around this crucial issue. In this series, we’re re-publishing interviews which feature the writer at his forceful and articulate best….
Read More about The Great Derangement: Conversations with Amitav Ghosh – 4Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh‘s non-fiction take on climate change and our collective inability to acknowledge its danger – titled The Great Derangement – has been hailed as a landmark, which promises to change the conversation around this crucial issue. In this series, we re-publish interviews which feature the writer at his forceful and articulate best….
Read More about The Great Derangement: Conversations with Amitav Ghosh – 3
Kurt Cobb writes: Hubbert is much maligned and much praised these days. But he is perhaps not well understood. Mason Inman’s compelling biography gives us all a chance finally to understand this scientific giant and the context within which he spawned insights on the future of energy that continue to be central to our lives….
Read More about Who was M. King Hubbert and what was his prediction about the future of oil?
Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh‘s non-fiction take on climate change and our collective inability to acknowledge its danger – titled The Great Derangement – has been hailed as a landmark, which promises to change the conversation around this crucial issue. In this series, we’re re-publishing interviews which feature the writer at his forceful and articulate best….
Read More about The Great Derangement: Conversations with Amitav Ghosh – 2
Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh‘s non-fiction take on climate change and our collective inability to acknowledge its danger – titled The Great Derangement – has been hailed as a landmark, which promises to change the conversation around this crucial issue. In this series, we’re re-publishing interviews which feature the writer at his forceful and articulate best….
Read More about The Great Derangement: Conversations with Amitav Ghosh – 1
Raghu Karnad writes: The mysterious absence of climate disaster from contemporary arts and fiction is the central issue in Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, a genuinely important book. The book’s about much else: but stops at every point to ask why our pressing concern, that we are wrecking our climate and habitat, is so ignored….
Read More about Why we do not hear the waters: The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh
Green anarchist John Zerzan is arguably the world’s most prominent anti-technology philosopher. His new book, Why Hope? The Stand Against Civilization, published by Feral House, makes the startling argument that ‘nothing produced by civilization can ever redeem the systematic attempt it has undertaken these few millennia to destroy or alienate human connection with the earth.”…
Read More about The Anarcho-Primitivist who wants us all to give up technology
The introduction to Our Renewable Future, a new book on the profound, all-encompassing energy transformation that will be witnessed throughout the world over the next few decades. Two irresistible forces will drive this historic transition: the necessity of avoiding catastrophic climate change and the ongoing depletion of the world’s oil, coal, and natural gas resources….
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Broroti Roy writes that in India, many are reluctant to use the term ‘degrowth’ because growth is seen as the only way to get rid of poverty. However, there are many grassroots initiatives emerging here, too, which follow the same principles of respecting the planet’s limits and pursuing the core values of equity and justice….
Read More about Bookshelf: Degrowth – A Vocabulary for a New EraTwelve years ago, John Perkins published his best-seller, ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’, where he described his career convincing heads of state to adopt economic policies that impoverished their countries and undermined democratic institutions to promote U.S.’ interests. This new book is an updated version, and details how those methods have evolved since then….
Read More about Video & Report: More Confessions of an Economic Hitman
