Bharati Chaturvedi

The Rio+20 meeting is just a few weeks away. Sitting here in India's sixth largest city, Pune, there is evidence of deep transformation since the last United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio, in 1992. The last time around, in the Rio Declaration, people were placed...

Go back about 2,300 years, when one of India's most epic battles was fought, in the kingdom of Kalinga in eastern India. If you were to trace the boundaries of Kalinga today, it would largely coincide with Orissa, an Indian state as infamous now for its pockets of dire poverty...

For the last 7 weeks, I've been the target of several minor viruses. They've entered my body through the air, pushed me to exhaustion, forced me to sleep much longer, pummeled my head with a dull ache and sometimes, injected my entire body with low fever. I knock...

Where are you currently holidaying? Chances are, if you are on a trip to India, you would have seen the many dramatic images they put out for tourists.

In the 1980s, Indian government offices were lined with colourful posters with a breathtaking image that said 'India' in both English...

While the world's attention is focused on the terrible oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, India is suddenly facing it's own Deepwater Moment. It's council of ministers-the political representatives who make key policy decisions for various departments (called Ministries in India)-severely disagree on the importance of protecting the environment....

Of the many worlds that American audiences saw on film, few would be as far removed as that of Egypt's garbage pickers, the Zabbaleen. Yet, Mai Iskander's film, Garbage Dreams was enthralling and moving enough for it to win awards and attract audiences. What was so compelling about...

Millets. It used to be a word I'd cram from my geography textbook in grade Nine. Millets were described as coarse grains grown in parts of India where the soil was not fertile and water was scarce. Apart from this disempowering description, my only other understanding of millets was from...

On the Southern periphery of Delhi squats one of India's most expensive shopping malls. Inside, some of the world's best-known upscale design houses display clothing, bags and accessories to a bustle of label conscious Indians. These shoppers easily spend more on a bag than they would pay the chauffeurs of...

An abiding image of contemporary India is the high-tech call center. A less known one is the wire-strewn electronic waste recycling yard.

India's 300 million-strong middle class is buying more and more electronic goods; televisions are no longer a novelty and computers are de rigueur for children. Cell phones have...