The Federal

Are you curious about birds and want to know their numbers in your city/town? Here’s your chance: The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) will be celebrating the birth anniversary of ornithologist Dr Salim Ali (November 12) by holding ‘Salim Ali Bird Count’ between November 5 and 12. You don’t need to be an expert on birds to participate in th...

Days before the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK, India has said setting net zero carbon emissions targets is not the solution to climate change. A wide-ranging panel of environmental experts from around the country endorses that view, with the caveat that India can on its own take steps to limit the damage from environmental disasters. Rich ...

Tropical storms, in the last 21 years, have had an overall positive impact on the ability of mangroves in India to fix carbon dioxide, a key climate-warming greenhouse gas, says a study. Researchers at the department of geography at the University of Georgia in the United States, looked at how mangrove productivity or carbon assimilation (indica...

It has been more than a month since Kenjira, a film in Paniya, a language spoken by the Paniya tribe, has been released on OTT, but those who belong to the scheduled tribe living in Kerala’s Wayanad and the neighbouring areas of Karnataka are unable to watch it. Many don’t have smartphones. Those who do don’t have sufficient data to watch a movie o...

When Nalini Jameela, a sex worker, published Oru Laingikathozhilaliyude Athmakatha (The Autobiography of a Sex Worker) in 2005, the book sold like hot cakes in three months, giving her the status of a best-selling author. A revised edition and two other books followed. It was a turning point in the life of Nalini, who worked as a sex worker for ...

Aggregate numbers sometimes hide more than they reveal. On September 30, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) announced that the southwest monsoon was normal in 2021 since the country received 870 mm of rainfall between June and September. According to the department’s long-period average (LPA) calculated on rainfall data collected between ...

Remember the Durga idol depicted as a migrant-worker mother embarking on a journey home on foot with her children in tow, at a South Kolkata puja pandal last year? This year the deity, again depicted as migrant worker, finds herself locked in a detention camp with her children, as the puja committee, the Barisha Club in Behala, decided to come up with a sequel to their earlier thought-provoking theme to depict an ongoing crisis.

It’s been barely two months since DC Comics took the internet by storm when it revealed that Batman’s sidekick Tim Drake, a.k.a Robin, was actually bisexual. On Monday (October 11), the U.S-based comic industry giant has taken another bold step by announcing that Superman too will be coming out as bisexual in an upcoming November issue of the comic...

Yes, we’ve got an ocean of bad news. Climate change is warming and acidifying seawater, stressing or destroying coral reefs. Marine species ranging from whales to algae are endangered; overfishing is crushing many subsistence fisheries. Coastal ecosystems have been wiped out on a grand scale; key ocean currents may be faltering; mining firms are...

We all have that elderly uncle or aunt who is sharp as a whip, witty as, well, Tyrion or Jamie Lannister, and who doesn’t forget names or places or incidents. How did they manage to not just live a long healthy life but also remain mentally smart in old age? There is food for the brain that can help with that - directly impacting inflammation...

There is no state in India which isn’t battling the challenge of man-animal conflict, posed by a multitude of factors like urbanisation and commercialization, population explosion, food security and many more. While the problem looks insurmountable, the Warli tribals of Maharashtra have shown the way towards understanding the conflict from the pers...

A parliamentary standing committee has recently urged the Government of India to renegotiate the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) with Pakistan, as climate change and environmental impact assessment (EIA) issues are missing in the original 1960 treaty. This is the first formal attempt by India to raise questions over the basic structure of IWT, citing envi...

The ugly face of politicians, the lack of justice for the voiceless poor, the powerless judiciary or the lure of crime in urban cities - Bollywood, for all its song and dance, manages at times to reflect all these facets of Indian society and more in their movies. Sometimes, it may be over the top but the message hits home. Besides tapping into ...

Erratic climate changes in Kashmir are affecting organic honey production, which has been thriving in the region in the past few years. The sudden rain, warmer winters and unpredictable storms have lead to bee mortalities and hamper production in the 70,000 bee colonies that have cropped up all over the region.This is one of the reasons many beekeepers take their precious colonies of bees and move to warmer climes like Jammu, Punjab and even further south to Rajasthan during winter months. It is an annual pilgrimage the beekeepers of Kashmir undertake to ensure they keep producing honey and generate big bucks.

Thanneer talks about the chaos of life during the first known water crisis in Madras in the late 1960s

For the longest time, king cobras were considered to be a monotypic genus. This means the world’s longest venomous snakes all over the world were regarded as a single species under the genus Ophiophagus.

Mohapatra's grandson, the 24 year old Smitesh Mohapatra, has mustered up courage and seems committed to fulfill the wishes of his grandfather, the Padma Bibhushan recipient and Rajya Sabha Member to build the prestigious Adityanarayan (another name for the sun) temple. The work had come to a standstill when COVID had struck a mortal blow.

More than 3,000 art works, 267 artists, six large venues spread over 3 km and a long list of various cultural programmes. That makes up the contemporary art exhibition, ‘Lokame Tharavadu' (The world is one family), which was flagged off in the picturesque coastal town of Kerala’s Alappuzha on April 18 this year. The organisers however had to clo...

Camels were once a prized possession for breeders in Rajasthan. Madhavram Raika, a breeder from Pali district, said that his father owned 150 camels. Of these, both young and adult male camels would be sold at a handsome price, sustaining the family for decades. A law in 2015, the Rajasthan Camel (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Tempo...