Kick start this new year on a wise and healthy note with a mouthful of millets. Learn more about their varieties, benefits, and environmental importance. ************************************* Hi friends! Have you ever reflected upon the usual grains that we eat every day? Apart from the most popular, wheat and rice, there are a lot of other cereals that we consume like sorghum (jowar), pearl millet (bajra), finger millet (ragi), and buckwheat (kuttu). Most of these are local foods and are prepared on special occasions like fasts or festivities...
The story of how a village got its first toilet. *********************************** G Nandakumar is a young farmer in Diguvapalem, a remote hamlet and a chronically drought-prone area in southern Andhra. In 2019, I met him on a school hiking trip, as part of our Geography classes. 'Nandu,' fondly addressed as so, was keen to upgrade his village by pursing some sustainable environmental practices, like organic farming. However, he lacked the resources to execute his vision. So, as a young student, I was very inspired by his ideas and wanted to help...
An interview with Deepak Bhati and Gauri Arora, Programme Officers in the Sustainable Food Systems team of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, simplifying the complicatedness of antimicrobial resistance for our young readers. ******************************************** Hi Deepak and Gauri! We’ve been hearing about this complex and scary thing, ‘Antimicrobial Resistance’ (AMR). Can you please unpack it for our kids?...
A novel carbon-capturing method involving old basalt rocks—this proposal won a gold medal for India at the International Earth Science Olympiad 2022. *********************************** Global warming is a burning issue affecting the earth. Discussed in all forums at the international and regional levels, this issue is a worry worldwide because its impact is devastating. Various methods are being proposed to effectively combat this problem...
An alert issued regarding unhealthy packaged foods, and how food nutrition labels can and cannot help us to become aware. ************************************************************************************** I know you all kids must be excited about Dusshera and Diwali. The whole month you’ll be exchanging sweets and offering scrumptious feasts. Our friends and families will enjoy beautifully wrapped gifts of savouries— chocolates, candies, chips, soft drinks, and what not! Their advertisements will flood our television screens and social media, and even masquerade as a renewed form of celebration with the …
Hunting animals used to be central to the survival of most human communities over most of human history, whether it be for food or medicines or to use their fur and skin as clothes and rugs. Communities had developed ways to hunt animals without overexploiting them, such that the animals and humans could survive together. While we try to inculcate the values of sustainability in people today through classes and lectures, such values used to be a matter of common sense. If you kill all the animals this year, what are you going to hunt next year?...
Commemorating the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav with a brief tale of our peoples and environment from c. 1872–2022, spanning about 75 years before and after our tryst with destiny. ************************* 'Why was India lost?’ asked Mahatma Gandhi in his famous little book of philosophies, the Hind Swaraj, in 1909. Without any pun intended, he answered some lines later: ‘The English have not taken India; we have given it to them.’...
The World Water Woe is real. There is crisis everywhere because our water resources are limited. A lot of water is wasted when we use it carelessly. Therefore, we should conserve it by handling it judiciously. Watch this inspiring movie Drop by Drop featuring the little heroes of class 3, reminding us about the importance of saving water by following the right practices. These practices focus upon three simple ways of preserving water before, and not after, its consumption. For example...
This dream of Gobar Times magazine emphasizes upon spreading awareness for mitigating the climate crisis. ********************************* We are living in a time of panic and distress, yet we continue to be in a state of delusion. Climate change is real. If we do not accept this truth and take control of the situation, we will face extinction. While an overload of information we receive every day on climate change dehumanises the crisis and makes it distant and unreal, a huge chunk of the subject that usually gets left out from the data...
