Author: Deshwale Science and Environment Desk

It sits above the shoulders like a crown. It has shaped civilisations, survived ten thousand years of selective breeding, and still confounds modern science in the most interesting ways. The hump of the Indian cow is not an accident of evolution. It is evolution’s masterpiece. Stand in front of a Gir bull on a warm Gujarat morning. Let your eyes travel up from the hooves, past the deep chest and the loose pendulous skin hanging from the neck, up along the strong back and stop there, at the shoulders. Rising from the spine like a slow wave frozen mid-break is…

दशकों से मुंबई और उसके कचरे का रिश्ता केवल भारी खर्च और पर्यावरणीय अपराधबोध की कहानी रहा है। हर दिन यह शहर अरबों लीटर सीवेज पैदा करता है, जिसका अधिकतर हिस्सा शोधन के विभिन्न स्तरों के बाद अरब सागर में बहा दिया जाता है। यह हमेशा से नगर पालिका के बजट पर एक बड़ा बोझ और अदृश्य खर्च रहा है। लेकिन अब बृहन्मुंबई नगर निगम (बीएमसी) के गलियारों में एक खामोश बदलाव दिख रहा है। शहर अब अपने गंदे पानी को फेंकने वाली मुसीबत के बजाय एक संसाधन के रूप में देख रहा है, जिसे इकट्ठा करके, साफ करके बेचा…

For decades, the story of Mumbai’s relationship with its own waste has been one of expensive disposal and environmental guilt. Every day, the city generates billions of litres of sewage, most of which eventually finds its way into the Arabian Sea after varying degrees of treatment. It has always been a cost centre, a massive, invisible drain on the municipal budget. But a quiet shift is occurring within the corridors of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The city is finally beginning to view its wastewater not as a liability to be flushed away, but as a resource to be harvested,…

The skyline of the average North Indian town is undergoing a violent transformation. In places like Rohtak, Meerut, or Hissar, dust rises where ancestral homes once stood. Old brick walls are broken down. Courtyards are filled in. In their place, glass-fronted buildings wrapped in ACP sheets rise quickly, reflecting heat and light in equal measure. To a city planner, this is more than a change in aesthetics. It is a collapse of environmental logic. We are trading thousands of years of climate-tested architectural wisdom for a fragile, high-maintenance mimicry of the West. The traditional Haveli was never just a display…

Manipal, March 24, 2026: Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) has inaugurated the Manipal Global SDG Convergence 2026 (MAGSCON 2026), a three-day international conference aimed at advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The event is being held at Dr TMA Pai Auditorium in Manipal, Karnataka, and runs from March 24 to 26. MAGSCON 2026 brings together academicians, policymakers, industry leaders, and global partners to explore collaborative solutions for sustainable development. The conference focuses on the role of higher education and innovation in accelerating progress towards the 17 SDGs, which address key global challenges such as climate change, health,…

At 2 in the afternoon, the road outside a residential block in Delhi lies unusually silent. A tea seller, who would normally expect a small crowd at this hour, wipes sweat from his forehead and looks at the empty pavement. It is only mid March, yet the heat carries the weight of peak summer. A delivery rider pauses under a shrinking patch of shade, checking his phone before stepping back into the glare. The calendar says spring. The body says something else. Across India, this scene is repeating itself. From Mumbai to inland cities, March has arrived not as a…

In the still waters of freshwater ponds and streams resides a remarkable, almost invisible organism: the hydra. Despite its tiny size, this simple, tentacled creature has fascinated scientists for decades due to a rare and extraordinary trait it appears to resist aging almost entirely. Unlike most animals, which experience gradual physiological decline over time, hydra shows no measurable signs of biological ageing under laboratory conditions. Hydra is closely related to jellyfish and corals, yet it possesses a simplicity that is key to its longevity. Its body is made up of just a few cell types arranged in a tubular structure,…

The city used to get a warning before the heat came. Not anymore. For as long as most people can remember, Mumbai’s March arrived gently. The worst of winter was gone but summer had not yet shown its teeth. Mornings were soft. The sea breeze came in before ten o’clock. Schoolchildren played outside after lunch without it being a problem. Women hung laundry on terraces and it dried slowly, without the smell of scorched cotton. March, in the lived memory of older Mumbaikars, was almost a gift. This March, Santacruz Observatory recorded 40 degrees Celsius on March 11. The Ram…

Mumbai is hot. That is not news. But when the India Meteorological Department issues a yellow alert for Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad in the first week of March, before summer has even properly arrived, it is worth paying attention. Mumbai experienced its first heatwave of the 2026 season on 6 March, with maximum temperatures reaching 38.9 degrees Celsius in the suburbs and 36.2 degrees Celsius in South Mumbai. The Santacruz weather station recorded a maximum temperature of 38.7 degrees Celsius, significantly higher than the seasonal average, while the Colaba Coastal Observatory recorded around 35.7 degrees Celsius, several degrees above…

There is a moment, usually in late July, when Mumbai holds its breath. The rain hammers down in sheets. The streets flood. And somewhere beneath the noise of a city of 20 million people, a small and battered river quietly decides how bad the next few hours will be. The Mithi River is 17.8 kilometres long. It begins at Powai Lake, slides through some of the city’s most densely populated neighbourhoods and empties into Mahim Creek. By the standards of India’s great rivers, it barely qualifies as a waterway. Yet what happens inside that narrow channel shapes the fate of…