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24 Sep 2026

September 24, 2026 | Kolkata A climate-tech exit can reward investors, founders and employees. But what happens to the technology, jobs and environmental promise after the ownership changes? The real test of an exit may begin after the deal closes. SummaryIndia's climate-tech sector is attracting increasingly large pools of capital, but the money is becoming concentrated in fewer, more mature companies. Tracxn data reported in June 2026 showed that Indian climate-tech startups had raised about $12.8 billion across 1,583 startups over 17 years, while the first five months of 2026 alone saw $791 million across 74 funding rounds. Yet $524 million of that 2026 funding went into just five late-stage deals, while 44 seed-stage rounds together raised only $61 million. That makes exits important. A successful acquisition or secondary sale can return capital and create a pathway for new investment. But a deal can also transfer intellectual property, change product priorities, reduce jobs, alter customer access or leave publicly supported technology underused. A shutdown can be even more revealing: the financial investment may disappear while the climate problem remains. The question, therefore, is not simply whether investors made money. It is whether the climate solution continued to create public value after the term sheet changed hands. What Does a Climate-Tech Exit Really Mean? For venture capital, an exit is typically the point at which an investment becomes liquid. A fund invests in a company, the company grows, and eventually another investor, a strategic buyer or the public market provides a route for the original investor to sell its stake and realise returns. That, in itself, is not a problem. In fact, exits are an essential part of a functioning investment ecosystem. If investors cannot eventually return capital to their limited partners, they have less incentive to keep backing young companies that carry high levels of risk. This matters even more in climate technology, where the path from innovation to commercial viability can be long and expensive. A climate-tech company may spend years developing batteries, carbon-removal systems, energy-efficiency solutions, waste-management platforms, sustainable materials or agricultural technologies before generating reliable revenue. Unlike conventional software businesses, many of these technologies require significant research, physical infrastructure, testing and deployment before they can reach scale. India’s current funding pattern shows why the exit question matters. The country has attracted $12.8 billion in climate-tech funding across 1,583 startups, according to Tracxn data reported in June 2026. But between January and May 2026, just $791 million was raised across 74 funding rounds. Late-stage companies accounted for $524 million across only five deals, while 44 seed-stage rounds together raised just $61 million. The figures point to a clear tension: capital is available, but access to it is becoming increasingly concentrated as companies move through the startup lifecycle. Against this backdrop, a successful exit can reasonably be seen by investors as evidence that climate technology is becoming commercially investable. It can return capital to early investors, bring new money into the company and potentially create the conditions for further investment in the sector. But financial success is only one measure of an exit. The harder public-interest question begins after the deal closes: What happens to the climate solution once the investor leaves? Can Exits Keep Climate Capital Moving? There is a strong argument that they can. For the climate-tech ecosystem, a successful exit can do more than reward an early investor. It can create a pathway for capital to move from one generation of companies to the next. Consider Battery Smart. Green Frontier Capital invested in the EV battery-swapping company at an early stage and exited during its $65-million Series B in 2024. The round included both primary and secondary capital and was led by LeapFrog Investments. Inc42 reported that Green Frontier achieved roughly an 18x return, while Orios Venture Partners also made a partial exit. For an early-stage fund, this is essentially how the venture-capital cycle is designed to work. An investor takes on the risk at an early stage, the company grows, a growth-stage investor enters, and the original investor eventually gets liquidity. The company, meanwhile, gains access to new capital that can support its next phase of expansion. The returns generated by the early investment can then be deployed into another young company. Green Frontier Capital has itself described the Battery Smart exit as part of its broader climate-investment strategy, while its investment activity in 2026 indicates that it continues to back Indian climate businesses. This represents the more optimistic version of the exit story. An exit does not necessarily have to mark the end of a climate investment. It can act as a capital-recycling mechanism, allowing money, experience and confidence to move back into the sector. That recycling can have wider effects. Successful exits can strengthen investor confidence, make more capital available to emerging companies, give experienced founders and employees the financial resources to support or build new ventures, and make strategic buyers more willing to acquire climate technologies. Over time, they can also provide evidence that businesses addressing environmental problems can become commercially viable. Climate Policy Initiative’s work highlights the importance of financial instruments that help climate technologies cross difficult stages of development and reach commercialisation. Its Clean Economy Fund, for example, was designed around first-of-a-kind climate technologies and the financing gap faced by companies seeking roughly $1 million to $10 million at the early-growth stage. Under this interpretation, a successful exit can create public value indirectly. The investor receives a return, the company receives fresh capital, and the broader ecosystem potentially gains another source of funding for future climate solutions. But there is an important condition. Capital recycling only creates a stronger climate-tech ecosystem if the capital, expertise and opportunity actually get recycled. When Ownership Changes, Does the Climate Mission Change Too? This is where the standard exit narrative becomes incomplete. A strategic acquisition is not simply a financial transaction; it can also change who owns the technology, who controls the product roadmap, where the intellectual property sits, which customers are prioritised and whether a previously climate-focused product remains strategically important. Take Scorpius Trackers. In February 2025, Gensol Engineering said it had agreed to sell its US subsidiary, Scorpius Trackers, for ₹350 crore to a US renewable-energy company. The transaction included exclusive global intellectual property rights, except in India. Financially, the transaction can be viewed as an asset monetisation and a strategic move. But from an accountability perspective, the more important questions begin after the sale: Does the technology continue to be developed and deployed? What happens to the employees and customers who depend on it? And does the new ownership expand access to the solution or simply consolidate its intellectual property? The answers matter because an acquisition cannot be measured only by its price or the returns it generates. Whether the technology continues to deliver its intended climate impact is what determines whether the transaction creates value beyond the shareholders. What Does Regulation Protect When Climate-Tech Changes Hands? India already has regulatory frameworks governing certain acquisitions and mergers, but these frameworks do not necessarily address whether a climate-focused technology continues to deliver its intended environmental purpose after ownership changes. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) requires qualifying combinations to be notified before they are completed, subject to applicable thresholds and exemptions. Its framework covers acquisitions of control, shares, voting rights and assets, and allows the Commission to modify or prohibit transactions that are likely to cause an appreciable adverse effect on competition. For listed companies, SEBI’s takeover regulations also govern matters related to acquisitions and disclosures. But these mechanisms address questions that are different from the climate-tech accountability question. Competition law focuses on whether a transaction could harm competition. Securities regulation focuses on disclosure and investor protection. Corporate law deals with whether a transaction has been legally structured and approved. The climate-tech question is different: Will the technology continue to deliver what it was developed to deliver? That question becomes particularly relevant because climate technologies often receive public support before they become commercially mature. The Department of Science and Technology’s NIDHI-PRAYAS programme, for instance, supports innovators in converting ideas into prototypes and commercial products, with grants of up to ₹10 lakh. Other public innovation programmes similarly connect government support with technology development and commercialisation. In some government-supported R&D programmes, the conditions go further. MeitY funding terms include provisions relating to intellectual property and commercialisation, including circumstances in which public-interest considerations may allow intervention if technology is not commercialised or national or public interests require it. The point is not that every startup receiving public money should be protected from acquisition. It is that when public funding helps build a technology, there is a legitimate accountability question about what happens to that technology when private ownership changes.  When an Exit Changes More Than Ownership For investors, an exit usually means liquidity. For employees, it can mean something very different. An acquisition can bring ESOP wealth, retention bonuses or new employment opportunities, but it can also lead to restructuring, relocation, layoffs or changes in pay and benefits. Employees may also lose the sense of purpose that drew them to the company in the first place. This distinction matters particularly in climate-tech, where people often join young companies for a combination of salary, equity and purpose. An acquisition may preserve the business while fundamentally changing that relationship between the company and its workforce. A shutdown can be even more disruptive. BluSmart illustrates the other side of the equation. The electric mobility company had raised more than $150 million, operated thousands of EVs and reached significant ride volumes before its business began to unwind in 2025. As its funding problems deepened, the company suspended operations, leaving thousands of vehicles as stranded assets or potential recovery targets for lenders and lessors. Reuters later reported that BluSmart entered insolvency proceedings after operations were suspended, with the crisis also intertwined with governance concerns involving its listed affiliate, Gensol. The case highlights an important distinction: a company can be built around a climate-positive business proposition and still fail as an institution. When that happens, the environmental value created by the business does not automatically move to another owner or operator. The cars may remain. The charging infrastructure may remain. The software may remain. The workers remain. The underlying mobility problem remains. But the company that connected all of these pieces can disappear. That is why shutdowns belong in the climate-tech exit conversation. An exit is not only about who receives the financial returns. It is also about what happens to the technology, people and climate value left behind when the company can no longer carry its mission forward. When a Successful Exit Fails the Climate Test A climate-tech exit can be financially successful and still fall short of its environmental promise. That is the central tension an accountability-focused assessment needs to examine. Consider a hypothetical climate startup that receives government grants, venture capital and corporate pilot contracts to develop a new technology. A large company eventually acquires it. Investors make strong returns, founders gain financially and employees receive value through their ESOPs. The acquisition is announced as a success. But two years later, the picture could look very different. The product may no longer be deployed. Pilot customers may have disappeared. The original team may have been dissolved, while the technology has been absorbed into another platform. The emissions reductions promised during the company’s growth may never have been properly measured, and intellectual property developed with public support may no longer be accessible to the users it was intended to benefit. Financially, the transaction may have worked. Environmentally, the outcome may not have. That is why valuation, investor returns or the headline acquisition price cannot be the only evidence used to judge the success of a climate-tech exit. The real measure is whether the technology continues to create the environmental and public value it was developed to deliver. What Evidence Should Prove a Climate-Tech Exit Worked? An acquisition announcement can tell us who bought the company and how much the deal was worth. It cannot, on its own, tell us what happened to the technology, employees or climate impact afterwards. For that, reporters need a much wider evidence trail. 1. The Deal Start with the terms of the transaction. Were there any impact covenants, deployment targets or commitments to protect jobs? If the company received public funding, were any grant conditions or obligations transferred to the new owner? Was there a commitment to maintain access to the technology? 2. The Technology Establish what the company had actually built before the exit. What technology or intellectual property changed hands? Who were its customers, and how many pilot projects had become paying deployments? These details help distinguish a functioning climate solution from a technology that exists mainly on paper. 3. The Money Follow the capital. How much had the company raised, and how much of the exit involved primary versus secondary capital? How much went to existing shareholders, and how much had actually been invested in product development and deployment? 4. The People An exit can change the workforce as much as it changes ownership. Report how many employees were there before the transaction and how many remain afterwards. Check whether workers received ESOP payouts, were retained or transferred, or faced layoffs. The fate of founders and technical teams can also reveal how much of the original expertise remains with the business. 5. The Public Support Check whether the company received government grants, concessional finance, incubator support or publicly funded R&D. If it did, reporters should examine what obligations or conditions came with that support and what happens to them after ownership changes. 6. The Climate Result Finally, measure the actual environmental outcome. What was the baseline? What changed after deployment? Was the result measured in absolute terms or only as an intensity metric? What methodology was used, and was the result independently verified? Above all, one question should remain central: Was the technology actually deployed and delivering its intended impact after the exit? This follows the SustainVerse evidence standard: every number should have a unit, period, boundary, denominator and source, while announced, contracted, commissioned, operational and measured outcomes must not be treated as interchangeable. A climate-tech exit should therefore be investigated not just through the deal document, but through the evidence of what the deal left behind. Whose Definition of Success Matters After an Exit? “Public value” does not mean the same thing to everyone involved in a climate-tech exit. Investors, founders, employees, customers and public institutions can all look at the same transaction and measure its success differently. Those competing perspectives need to be taken seriously. For investors, a successful exit can itself be seen as part of the value created. Capital needs to be recycled, and a fund that cannot eventually return money to its limited partners may find it harder to raise and deploy new capital. An acquisition can also generate the confidence and financial returns needed to back the next generation of climate startups. For founders, an acquisition may be the most realistic route from a promising pilot to large-scale deployment. A large industrial company may already have factories, customers, procurement networks and international distribution that a startup would struggle to build on its own. From this perspective, selling the company could help a climate solution reach more users rather than weaken its purpose. For employees, the questions are more personal: What happens to their jobs, their equity and the product they spent years building? An exit can create financial gains through ESOPs, but it can also bring restructuring, new ownership terms or changes to the work and mission that attracted them. For customers, the acquisition price may matter less than whether the technology continues to work, whether support and spare parts remain available, and whether the promised savings or environmental benefits actually materialise. For the public-interest side, the concern is whether public support helped create something that continues to be accessible and useful after private ownership changes. If taxpayers helped fund the technology through grants, public R&D or other forms of support, what happens to that value after the exit becomes an important accountability question. These perspectives do not necessarily contradict one another. An exit can generate returns for investors, opportunities for founders and employees, and greater scale for a climate solution at the same time. The real test is whether the claims made by each stakeholder can be matched against the documents, the outcomes and what actually happens after the deal. Why the early-stage funding gap makes this question more urgent The exit debate cannot be separated from the funding pipeline. CPI's Clean Economy Fund identifies a financing gap for Indian climate companies seeking roughly $1 million to $10 million, particularly asset-heavy and IP-led businesses that are too risky for conventional lenders, too capital-intensive for early-stage investors and too small for growth equity. (CPI) That is precisely the stage at which future climate technologies can stall. Meanwhile, India's first five months of 2026 showed the opposite pattern: a large share of climate-tech funding was concentrated in a handful of late-stage deals. (The Economic Times) Rainmatter offers one contrasting philosophy. Its climate investment strategy explicitly describes a 10–15 year lens and says it is not built around quick exits. (mint) Green Frontier Capital presents another model: early-stage investors need realistic exit routes, and its leadership has argued that trade sales or sales to growth-stage investors may be more practical than waiting a decade for an IPO. (YourStory.com) These are not necessarily contradictory. They reveal a genuine debate over the architecture of climate capital: Should climate investors optimise for faster recycling of capital, or for longer holding periods that allow difficult technologies to mature? The answer may depend on the technology. A software-enabled climate platform may scale quickly. A new battery chemistry, industrial decarbonisation process or carbon-removal system may require years of testing, infrastructure and regulatory approval. One exit model cannot fit all of them. What would a better climate-tech exit actually look like? A better exit would not necessarily mean stopping acquisitions. It would mean making the consequences visible. For a company receiving public grants, the exit file could record: Grant → IP → Commercialisation obligation → Acquisition → New owner → Deployment → Outcome For an employee: Joining → ESOP → Exit → Payout/retention → New ownership terms For a community: Pilot → Public support → Technology deployment → Acquisition → Continued access → Measured benefit For an investor: Entry valuation → Capital deployed → Follow-on funding → Exit → Return → Reinvestment And for the climate: Baseline → Technology → Deployment → Emissions/resource outcome → Verification → Post-exit performance That is the timeline the article's visual should eventually show. Not a rising valuation curve. A capital-product-outcome timeline. So, When Does Venture Capital Become Public Value? Venture capital becomes public value when the value created by an investment does not end when the investor exits. An exit matters beyond the transaction itself when financial success continues to produce something useful in the real world. It may mean a climate technology reaches millions of users. It may mean an acquisition gives a promising solution the manufacturing capacity, infrastructure or distribution network it previously lacked. It may mean employees gain financial security through ESOPs and use that experience and capital to build the next generation of climate ventures. It may mean an early-stage investor recycles its returns into another difficult technology that still needs patient capital. These are the ways an exit can extend value beyond the deal. But the opposite must remain just as visible. An exit can concentrate technology. A shutdown can strand valuable assets. A sale can eliminate jobs. A grant-funded innovation can become inaccessible. A high valuation can coexist with weak deployment. And a climate label can survive long after the climate outcome itself has disappeared. This is why the success of a climate-tech exit cannot be understood through valuation, acquisition price or investor returns alone. India’s climate-tech market is growing and its funding base is expanding, but capital is also becoming more selective and increasingly concentrated in later-stage opportunities. As the funding pipeline becomes more selective, the quality and consequences of exits become increasingly important—not simply the number of deals completed. The next phase of India’s green investment story therefore needs a broader definition of success. Not just: How much capital went in? Not just: How much did the investor make? But what happened to the technology? What happened to the people? What happened to the public support behind it? What happened to the promised deployment? And, most importantly, what happened to the climate impact? Because the real measure of an exit is not what the investor takes out of the company. It is what remains after they leave. So, the real exit test is this: What did the world inherit after the investor left?References : Economic Times / ETtech. “India's climate-tech funding reaches $12.8 billion across 1,583 startups & 17 years.” 8 June 2026. Based on Tracxn’s India Climate Tech 2026 Report. Inc42. “Exclusive: Green Frontier Capital Exits Battery Smart With About 18X Returns.” 18 June 2024. Green Frontier Capital. “Battery Smart.” Company portfolio profile and reported deployment/scale data. Reuters. “Indian e-cab provider BluSmart enters insolvency amid corporate governance challenges.” 29 July 2025. ETEnergyWorld. “Gensol signs ₹350 crore agreement to monetize US solar tracker business.” 25 February 2025. Gensol Engineering / National Stock Exchange filing. “Gensol Engineering Unlocks Value with INR 350 Crore Strategic Deal for Scorpius Trackers' US Subsidiary.” 25 February 2025. Climate Policy Initiative (CPI). “Clean Economy Fund.” Information on climate-tech commercialisation and early-growth financing in India. ...Read more

24 Sep 2026

From the Aravallis to Arunachal, and from Great Nicobar to Ladakh, big-ticket projects are being advanced through a system that counts megawatts, ports and contracts more readily than forests, water, consent and risk, finds Prof Ujjwal K Chowdhury. SummaryIndia's development debate is often presented as a choice between jobs and conservation. The record of the last decade shows a more troubling question: who gets the contract, who gets the electricity or revenue, and who absorbs the costs when a forest, river or common land is changed beyond repair? Government data show 215,943 hectares of forestland approved for non-forest use between 2014-15 and 2025-26, with the annual pace rising sharply in the last two years. Court records, parliamentary reports and CAG audits document narrowed protections, unresolved consent, illegal extraction, project delays and steep cost overruns. These records do not prove one secret conspiracy behind every project. They do reveal an operating pattern: public authorities take ecological risks, communities lose the resources they depend on, and a concentrated circle of project developers and contractors receives the work. The counter-evidence is just as important: communities can restore water and livelihoods when they govern local commons. Development is not measured by the size of a project, but by whether it leaves people and landscapes more secure. A woman measures development in water In Shyampur, a village in Rajasthan's Karauli district, Anita gave rural journalist Bharat Dogra a measure of progress that no project appraisal can easily capture: the village began to move forward only after water scarcity eased. It is an ordinary sentence with a hard policy implication. Water is not a side benefit of development. It is the platform on which health, farming, livestock, education and income stand.[2] Dogra's account follows five decades of visiting drought-struck villages. In the Bundelkhand and Patha belt, he describes women carrying muddy water over long distances, cattle left behind when fodder and water ran out, and wells reduced to dangerous pits. He also records a different kind of infrastructure: Shyampur's 18 new water bodies and 14 restored ones, a de-silted tank, water-saving farming and village stewardship. Nearly three-quarters of cultivated land there was reported to have returned to productive use.[2] In one drought in the Patha plateau, Kol tribal women walked nearly five kilometres in the heat for two pitchers of unsafe water. Dogra's point is not nostalgia for village life. It is that a destroyed catchment can make even a newly installed tap unreliable, while watershed repair can restore water for people, farms, livestock, birds and wildlife at once.[2] That story sets the test for India's largest projects. A dam, mine, road or port may promise energy, trade or security. But if it degrades a village catchment, fragments a forest or removes access to grazing, fish and sacred places, it can subtract the foundations of everyday life while adding impressive figures to an investment deck. The ledger puts construction costs in bold type and ecological liabilities in small print. The clearance ledger is accelerating Official figures reported to Parliament show that 215,943 hectares of forestland were approved for non-forest use between 2014-15 and 2025-26. Nearly 62 per cent was cleared for mining, hydropower, irrigation and roads. The annual average rose from about 14,941 hectares in 2014-19 to 19,223 hectares in 2019-24. In 2024-25 and 2025-26 alone, approvals reached 45,125 hectares, or roughly 61 hectares each day.[9] These are approvals, not a measure of how much was actually felled; still, the direction and scale matter. A separate petition filed in the Delhi High Court alleges that the National Board for Wildlife's Standing Committee approved 97 per cent of 2,186 proposals between 2014 and 2026, involving at least 95,724 hectares. That is an allegation in a pending case, not a judicial finding. It raises a serious governance question all the same: if the body charged with scrutinising projects in wildlife landscapes almost never says no, what level of scrutiny is taking place?[4] The eastern Himalaya saw especially sharp increases. Arunachal Pradesh recorded 6,038 hectares of diversion in 2024-26, more than eight times its 2014-19 total; Sikkim's two-year total was nearly 19 times its earlier five-year total.[9] These are headwaters and steep slopes where floods, landslides and seismic hazards make mistakes unusually costly. A national average hides local concentration. Parcel-by-parcel clearances can miss the cumulative damage from roads, power lines, mines and reservoirs within one connected landscape. When the law moves the goalposts The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act of 2023 narrowed the statutory coverage to land formally notified as forest or recorded in government records on or after 25 October 1980. It also exempts specified strategic and security projects near borders and in other areas. The government says the change clarifies coverage and facilitates national security infrastructure. PRS warns that previously recorded but unnotified forests, and some land converted before the 1996 Supreme Court ruling, could fall outside central approval.[10] The exemptions are substantial in a border state: strategic linear projects of national importance can qualify within 100 kilometres of an international border, Line of Control or Line of Actual Control; security infrastructure up to 10 hectares is also listed, along with certain projects up to five hectares in areas affected by left-wing extremism. The Act also expands activities that may proceed without central approval to include government zoos and safaris in forest areas outside protected areas, eco-tourism facilities, and specified surveys.[10] In February 2024 the Supreme Court directed governments to keep applying the broader definition from the 1996 Godavarman case while land identification proceeds. That interim order is a guardrail, not a final ruling on every challenge.[11] The episode shows how a law can narrow protection and leave litigation to prevent it vanishing before records are complete. The 2022 Forest (Conservation) Rules let forest approval run alongside other statutory processes, including recognition of rights under the Forest Rights Act. The government says no final diversion order or land handover can occur until rights are settled.[12] The concern is practical: central approval can give a project momentum before communities establish what they own, use or hold sacred. A right considered after in-principle approval is harder to exercise than one considered before the site and contracts are fixed. In September 2026, a parliamentary committee called unanimous Gram Sabha consent a major obstacle to hydropower and proposed a 70-75 per cent threshold. The Tribal Affairs Ministry replied that the Forest Rights Act contains no general clause requiring such consent for forest clearance. That reading has force: the Act's express consent provision is specific. It does not settle questions about rights recognition, clearance conditions or authority over community resources.[3] Niyamgiri remains the clearest example of a Gram Sabha deciding a rights question. In 2013 the Supreme Court held that village assemblies should determine whether mining affected the Dongria Kondh's religious and cultural rights. The assemblies rejected the mine; it did not proceed.[13] This is not a universal veto. It is a reminder that rights tied to one landscape cannot be averaged away by counting neighbouring villages. The Aravalli hills are disappearing twice First the hills disappear under mining; then they risk disappearing from the maps that define protection. In 2018, a Central Empowered Committee report found that 31 of 128 sampled hills in Rajasthan's Alwar district had vanished since 1967-68. The Supreme Court ordered the state to stop illegal mining in the affected area.[14] The CAG's audit shows the enforcement failure was systemic. Rajasthan recorded 48,486 illegal-mining cases from 2015-16 to 2019-20, with cases up 169 per cent by the final year. Satellite analysis found illegal mining in 122 test cases, covering 83.25 hectares. The audit also found irregularities at 81.68 per cent of selected weighbridges and Rs 13.99 crore in penalties not imposed for unauthorised extraction.[15] This does not prove a political conspiracy; it documents weak controls that let extraction outrun the rules. In 2025 the Supreme Court accepted a 100-metre elevation test for defining Aravalli hills. The Indian Express reported that the Forest Survey of India warned this could exclude nearly 90 per cent of the hills. The Court put the definition on hold and appointed a new expert panel. Its August 2026 report said the range cannot be mapped by elevation alone: forests, water systems, biodiversity, habitat links and livelihoods matter too. It sought until February 2027 to complete the review.[16][17] The Aravalli is a range, not isolated peaks. Its lower ridges help hold soil and channel water. Exclude that connective tissue and the landscape is fragmented on paper before a bulldozer arrives. Great Nicobar has no spare island The Union government presents Great Nicobar as a strategic port-led hub with a terminal, airport, township and power plant. The NGT record puts the project cost at about Rs 81,834 crore. The government has approved in principle diversion of 130.75 square kilometres of forest, saying 65.99 square kilometres will remain green with no tree felling and citing biodiversity plans and monitoring.[18][20] Those safeguards matter; so does the scale of change. Great Nicobar is not an interchangeable parcel in a tree-planting ledger. Its forests and coasts sustain the Shompen, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group, and the Nicobarese, alongside endemic species and leatherback turtle nesting habitat. In 2024, experts told the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes that the developer's calculation of the tribal reserve remaining protected was flawed and that tribal views were ignored.[19] The government says it followed consultation and protection policies.[18] The dispute is about who defines protection and whether local accounts of risk shape the plan before it is locked in. The NGT upheld the clearance in February 2026, citing adequate safeguards and strategic importance. In May, the Calcutta High Court agreed to hear separate challenges to the forest-rights process.[20][32] The clearance has survived one environmental challenge; tribal-rights questions remain live. The NGT's 2026 order also points to conditions for leatherback turtles, Nicobar megapodes, saltwater crocodiles, robber crabs, macaques and endemic birds.[31] The issue is whether those conditions can manage a transformed landscape and cumulative pressure on forest, coast and community, not whether a clearance document lists protected species. Planting elsewhere cannot recreate a Nicobar rainforest, its species, coastal protection or the Shompen's cultural geography. Compensatory afforestation cannot make unlike ecosystems equivalent. In Arunachal the river is not vacant energy Arunachal Pradesh has declared 2025-35 its Decade of Hydropower, targeting 19,165 MW across 33 projects, against estimated potential above 50,000 MW.[23] The proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose Project is roughly 11,000-11,200 MW, with a dam up to 250 metres high. It remains at the survey stage; its final footprint and displacement list are not settled.[7][8] For Adi communities, the survey is not abstract: it is an official entry into ancestral land, farms, river and sacred geography. Residents from more than 27 villages oppose the project and surveys. Down To Earth reported that central armed forces were deployed in two districts in May 2025 to support the pre-feasibility survey. Villagers called the deployment coercive; authorities say the project is strategically important because of China's planned upstream dam.[24] The state government later said it would not rush the study and would hear affected families.[7] Consent requires a trusted process before equipment arrives. In September 2026, national environmental groups expressed solidarity with the Siang movement and said a CBI case under the FCRA against activist Bhanu Tatak formed part of a wider campaign to pressure dissent. That is the groups' allegation, not a court finding; it should be examined through due process.[6] A basin-wide assessment must account for sediment, fish, flood risk, seismic hazards, downstream communities and other proposed dams. A single-project study cannot show the cumulative effect on a river system. The Siang proposal is one part of that rush. The government's sectoral account also lists the 2,880 MW Dibang Multipurpose Project and 3,097 MW Etalin project in the Dibang basin.[23] The exact stage and footprint differ, but the combined scale makes basin-level assessment more important than any single project's clearance. Hydropower can be low-carbon at the point of generation and still impose high costs through forest loss, altered sediment, disrupted livelihoods and risk in a seismically active region. Subansiri Lower shows the financial risk. A parliamentary committee reported that the 2,000 MW NHPC project on the Assam-Arunachal border had risen from Rs 6,285 crore to an estimated Rs 27,949 crore, a 344.66 per cent increase.[25][26] Delays, disputes, redesign and disruption all contributed; no one cause explains the rise. The public purse carries the overrun while the valley carries the physical changes. Arunachal's revenue ambitions are real, as are India's power and security needs. But projected revenue is not realised benefit, and planned megawatts do not guarantee local prosperity. Affected people need enforceable benefit-sharing, independent safety review and a meaningful role before the dam becomes inevitable. The Western Ghats and the sunk-cost trap Karnataka's proposed 2,000 MW Sharavati pumped-storage project, estimated at Rs 10,240 crore, would require forest diversion inside the Lion-Tailed Macaque Sanctuary. In September 2026, Shankar Sharma reported that 142 hectares were at stake and a central expert committee had recommended against approval; the High Court stay ran through October 1. The committee cited tree felling, fragmentation and wildlife disturbance.[1][27] Sharma said RTI records showed seven project bills paid to an identified EPC contractor over about ten months before required clearances.[1] That is not proof of a bribe or corrupt award. It does show how public spending can become a sunk cost before an ecological decision is settled, making rejection politically harder. Proposals in the Varahi and Malaprabha catchments raise the same question: is each site necessary after comparing it with grid upgrades, demand management, battery storage and distributed systems? Batteries may not meet every long-duration need; alternatives should still be public and independently tested. The Varahi proposal alone is described as a 2,500 MW project in the catchment around Mookambika and Someshwara sanctuaries. A separate 1,600 MW Saundatti proposal would require forest diversion in the Malaprabha basin.[1] Their status is at the planning and tendering stage, not construction. That is precisely when a comparison of storage options, forest fragmentation and watershed impacts is least expensive to do and most useful to the public. On July 27, 2026, the Centre reissued a seventh draft to classify about 56,825 square kilometres across six states as ecologically sensitive. Previous drafts since 2014 did not produce a final settlement.[1] A region can be valuable enough to avoid casually clearing and still too politically contested to protect. Ladakh's fragile high country Strategic roads and mobile coverage serve Ladakh residents as well as defence personnel. The question is where and how they are built. In 2023 the State Board for Wildlife approved 25 projects in wildlife areas: 20 mobile towers, four security roads and a solar telescope on Pangong Lake's bank inside Changthang sanctuary.[21] The issue is whether separate permissions are assessed cumulatively. A peer-reviewed study of 24 Changthang wetlands found distance from roads and settlements strongly related to the abundance of several waterbird species.[22] This does not mean every road has the same effect. It does show that access and construction are ecological variables in a high-altitude wetland system. The cold desert supports black-necked cranes, kiang and migratory birds, and recovers slowly from disturbance. The black-necked crane is protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, and Changthang includes some of its important habitat.[22] This should prompt careful routing and seasonal controls, not a blanket refusal to serve remote settlements. The standard should be transparent mitigation with public monitoring after construction, not a one-time vote by the wildlife board followed by silence. A road may connect a hamlet to a clinic and open a wetland to traffic, tourism and waste. Planning must map breeding grounds, water sources and seasonal grazing, then track cumulative effects. The contractor is visible; the hidden costs are not The phrase 'politician-bureaucrat-contractor lobby' cannot replace evidence. The record does not prove one conspiracy behind every clearance, but it does show incentives. Appraisal is often file by file; a parliamentary review said hydropower relies on only four or five contractors and recommended expanding that base.[25] That is a concentrated market, not proof of collusion. The CAG found mismatches in Rajasthan's extraction and transit records, uncollected penalties, weak weighbridge controls and royalty revenue at risk.[15] Sharma's account of early contractor payments in the Western Ghats raises another accountability issue. Subansiri's cost rise shows how delays can shift costs to the public. Together, these records show activity outrunning financial and ecological controls, even if they do not prove every rupee became profit. One CAG finding was especially revealing: 13 mining leases showed no excavation, yet 5.2 lakh tonnes of mineral were recorded as dispatched using 22,854 electronic transit permits.[15] A well-run licensing and weighbridge system should make such discrepancies difficult. Where extraction proceeds and the state cannot reconcile the records or collect penalties, the gap is not a theoretical externality; it is a visible loss to the public purse and a possible gain to those moving the material. A contractor's work is measured in kilometres and bills. Lost commons are measured in less fodder, longer water walks, fewer fish or wetlands that no longer support birds. Land Conflict Watch maps about 1,095 conflicts; nearly 78 per cent involve commons.[28] Shared landscapes carry economic and cultural value that project appraisals routinely struggle to price. The Forest Survey of India's forest-cover measure includes land of at least one hectare with 10 per cent canopy, regardless of ownership or legal status, including plantations, orchards, bamboo and palms.[30] It measures canopy, not intact biodiversity. CAG audits have found weak monitoring, survival problems and gaps in identifying land for compensatory afforestation.[29] A new plantation may add cover without replacing an old forest's water regulation, soil, species or cultural role. The structural transfer is plain: project benefits are booked at the site and in revenue plans; losses are dispersed among villages, future generations and public budgets. Where rights are weak and ecological costs underpriced, profits can be private while risks are socialised. That is a defensible account of the lobby: not an accusation against every official or builder, but a system where a few decide and many live with the outcome. A different kind of infrastructure The 100 Stories of Commons archive documents communities protecting forests, wetlands, grazing land and village water bodies. It records not only what people lose but what they sustain.[5][28] Dogra's account of Shyampur belongs there, alongside Jal Sahelis who revive ponds and committees that maintain restored tanks.[2] These are not substitutes for every road or port; they show that public interest is not synonymous with scale. India needs energy, transport, flood protection and jobs. It also needs alternatives and community rights to shape projects before sites are fixed. Basin-wide studies should precede clearance. Publish appraisal minutes, forest maps, contractor awards and payments. Test the need against less damaging options. Recognise Gram Sabha rights before costs are sunk, and measure mitigation over time in the ecosystem being changed. For energy storage, that means comparing pumped storage with batteries, demand response, transmission and local storage against the actual duration and grid service required. For roads and security works, it means mapping the habitat first and publishing why a chosen route is necessary. For mines and ports, it means disclosing the full cost of water, restoration, carbon and community access, then auditing those promises after operations start. A mountain is not empty because a spreadsheet omits its streams or sacred paths. A forest is not replaceable because another state has space for saplings. Those facts belong on the first page of a project report, not the last page of a compensation plan. Anita's village rebuilt water bodies and made them work. From the Aravallis to Arunachal, ask before the next clearance: will this project make residents more secure, or will they pay for somebody else's idea of growth.  References: Inline bracketed numbers refer to the sources below. Government and court records are identified separately from reported analysis and advocacy claims. [1] Shankar Sharma, ‘Policy analyst urges PM, Environment Minister to halt ecologically destructive PSPs in Western Ghats,’ Counterview, 8 September 2026. [2] Bharat Dogra, ‘Where water changes lives: My fifty-year journey through thirsting villages,’ Counterview, 8 September 2026. [3] Palla Trinadha Rao, ‘Hydropower projects: How MoTA's one-page memo washes its hands of Gram Sabha consent,’ Counterview, 8 September 2026. [4] ‘Former bureaucrats question forest diversion and post-facto clearances,’ Counterview, 17 September 2026. [5] ‘Sustaining the shared: Lessons in resilience from India's 100 stories of commons,’ Counterview, 19 September 2026. [6] ‘Indigenous and environmental groups stand with Siang anti-dam struggle, raise FCRA concerns,’ Counterview, 22 September 2026. [7] Neha Desai, ‘The Siang divide: Development, indigenous rights and the fight over a mega dam,’ Counterview, 23 September 2026. [8] Lohit Sharma, ‘Submerging dissent: The true cost of Arunachal's hydropower rush,’ Counterview, 23 September 2026. [9] ‘India cleared 215,943 hectares of forest for non-forest use in 12 years,’ Down To Earth, 5 August 2026; analysis of official data reported to Parliament. [10] PRS Legislative Research, ‘The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023.’ [11] Supreme Court of India, interim order in W.P. (C) 1164/2023, 19 February 2024. [12] Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, ‘New Forest Conservation Rules, 2022,’ Press Information Bureau, 28 July 2022. [13] Supreme Court of India, Orissa Mining Corporation Ltd v. Ministry of Environment and Forests, 18 April 2013. [14] ‘31 hills vanish in Rajasthan's Aravalli region in 50 years: CEC report,’ Times of India, 23 October 2018. [15] Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Performance Audit on Illegal Mining in Rajasthan, Report No. 8 of 2022, Executive Summary. [16] Supreme Court of India, order in In Re: Definition of Aravalli Hills and Ranges, 29 December 2025. [17] The Indian Express, ‘Aravallis can't be defined by 1 yardstick: Supreme Court panel seeks extension,’ 4 September 2026. [18] Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Great Nicobar project environmental-impact reply, Press Information Bureau, 2024. [19] Down To Earth, ‘Great Nicobar Project clearances violate constitutional mandate, views of tribals ignored: Experts write to NCST,’ 23 April 2024. [20] Hindustan Times, ‘No good ground to interfere in Great Nicobar Holistic Development Project: NGT,’ 16 February 2026; and The Indian Express, ‘Calcutta HC agrees to hear PILs challenging forest rights clearance for Great Nicobar project,’ 8 May 2026. [21] Administration of the Union Territory of Ladakh, ‘State Board of Wildlife gives clearance to 25 projects in wildlife areas of Ladakh,’ 2023. [22] ‘Influence of anthropogenic factors on the waterbirds in Trans-Himalayan wetlands,’ Global Ecology and Conservation, 2023. [23] Government of India, ‘Hydropower: Powering Arunachal Pradesh's Economic Future,’ MyGov, 2 June 2026; and Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar University, ‘Local Response to National Projects: The Siang Hydropower Project in Arunachal Pradesh.’ [24] Down To Earth, ‘Survey tensions: Paramilitary enters Siang villages amid dam opposition,’ 22 May 2025. [25] PRS Legislative Research, ‘National Hydroelectric Power Corporation Limited,’ summary of Committee on Public Undertakings report, 6 August 2026. [26] The Tribune, ‘Parliamentary panel notes 345% cost overrun in NHPC's Subansiri project,’ 9 August 2026. [27] The New Indian Express, ‘Expert committee flags ecological risks, opposes Sharavathi project,’ 11 July 2026. [28] Land Conflict Watch and Common Ground Initiative, ‘100 Stories of Commons’ archive; database statistics accessed September 2026. [29] Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Performance Audit Report on Afforestation and Social Forestry Programme, Uttar Pradesh, Report No. 2 of 2024. [30] Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023, methodology for forest-cover mapping. [31] The Indian Express, ‘NGT clears Great Nicobar project, cites adequate safeguards in environmental nod,’ February 2026. [32] The Indian Express, ‘Calcutta HC agrees to hear PILs challenging forest rights clearance for Great Nicobar project,’ 8 May 2026.   ...Read more

23 Sep 2026

Green labels and statements about being eco-friendly can be seen anywhere. But what if they are not as green as they claim? Explore this article to understand how environmentalism can be used as a marketing tool by companies and analyse how consumers are affected by such actions. Learn about greenwashing and how it can be avoided while shopping and how people are misled into buying products that are not worth the money. SummaryThis article discusses the concept of greenwashing and how companies are using terms like “eco-friendly” and “natural” to mislead consumers into buying their products. The article gives examples from various industries, such as food packaging, clothing, cosmetics, and hotels, showing how easy it is to confuse customers with false claims and images. It also looks at why greenwashing is on the rise in India, what companies, advertisers, influencers, and customers themselves should do to stop it, and what changes can be expected in 2024 – in particular, what new rules have been developed in India (CCPA) concerning “green advertising.” Introduction  Is Everything Green Really Green? Suppose we go to the store to buy a bottle of shampoo. We look at two similar ones, but the second one has pretty leaves and pictures of plants, and words like natural, eco-friendly, sustainable and earth friendly. Our unconscious brain at once tells us that the second possibility is better for the environment. But is it really? This is where the dubious concept of greenwashing comes into play. We live in an age where environmentalism has crossed the threshold from a niche to mainstream. Climate change, plastic waste, deforestation, carbon footprint, and sustainable living are now terms that are not only discussed by environmental activists, but also by the youth who are much more concerned with checking brands’ sustainability than before. As a result, many companies jumped on the bandwagon – realising that the modern customer wants to support those who care for the environment, and therefore, all products now seem to have a green label, use recycled paper for packaging, and mention something about preserving the earth in their marketing.  But What If the Greenest Choice Isn’t Actually Green? Think about the last time we tried to buy something that was better for the environment. We picked a bottle because it had “eco-friendly” written on it, chose a product with minimal-looking packaging, or noticed a clothing brand promoting a new “conscious” collection. At that moment, it feels like we are making the right choice. But then comes the question: how do we really know? Just because a product looks green, uses words like “natural” or “sustainable,” or talks about saving the planet, does that make it environmentally friendly? Most of us do not have the time to investigate every product we buy. We see the label, trust what the brand tells us, and move on. And that’s exactly where things can get complicated. Sometimes, the image of sustainability can be much bigger than the actual effort behind it. That is where greenwashing comes in. What Is Greenwashing? Greenwashing is when a company, product, or service is more environmentally friendly than it is. The term was first coined by environmentalist “Jay Westerveld” in the 1980s, when he noticed that many hotels were encouraging guests to reuse towels to save the environment – even though they continued to engage in other destructive behaviours. Since then, this concept has evolved and now covers a wide range of manipulative practices by businesses. For example, if a company produces a plastic bottle labeled as ‘made with natural materials,’ this can be considered greenwashing. Yes, if some of the components are natural, the statement is not false. However, it does not tell us which ones, which raises more questions than answers. Consequently, any product that has misleading environmental claims, vague statements, unsubstantiated information, questionable certificates, misleading comparisons, unproven sustainability, irrelevant environmental statements, or even an overestimated positive impact can be greenwashed. The main problem with greenwashing is that the appearance of environmental friendliness rarely correlates with reality.  Why Is Greenwashing Difficult to Spot in India? Greenwashing is not always as obvious as when a company is making a false claim. Sometimes it is hidden behind words that sound good but tell us little. Words such as “natural,” “eco-friendly,” “sustainable,” “green” and “conscious” have become so ubiquitous in advertising and packaging that the actual meaning could be lost in translation. In India, these green claims are found everywhere. They can be found on a supermarket shelf, clothing websites, food products, hotel websites, social media advertisements, and e-commerce platforms. While a product can write down that their packaging is recyclable, for example, it does not necessarily tell us anything about the actual product itself. This is where the confusion begins for an ordinary consumer who does not have the time or technical knowledge to figure out how a company arrived at their environmental claim. We see the packaging and stop for the day. That does not mean that every environmental claim is misleading. Some companies do indeed make efforts to cut down on their waste, use recycled materials, or lower emissions. We should focus on whether a claim is specific or has evidence behind it. Greenwashing should therefore not only be about green words but asking what is behind those words.  When One Green Word Hides a Bigger Picture One of the best ways to spot greenwashing is to look beyond one positive feature of a product. For example, imagine a product that writes down that their packaging is made from recycled plastic. This might be a positive and genuine environmental effort, but the claim does not write down that the entire product is sustainable. The same goes for clothing that is made from recycled or organic fibres or hotels promoting a “green stay” that has cut down their plastic bottle use.  While these are indeed positive steps, they are only certain aspects of a larger whole. Instead of asking “Is this product green?” we should be asking “Which aspect of this product or service is being highlighted as green?” This switch in perspective is key.  The Three Questions We Should Be Asking Before Believing a Green Claim Whenever we come across an environmental claim, we like to ask three simple questions that make it easier to process. What exactly is being claimed? Is the company saying that the product itself is sustainable, or only its packaging? Is “recyclable” referring to the entire product or just one part? Compared with what? A claim such as “uses less plastic” does not say anything about what it is being compared to. Less than the company’s earlier packing? Less than a conventional product? And by how much? Where is the evidence? This is the most important question for me. A claim should ideally have some form of supporting evidence such as a study, certification, data, or a clearly explained method of measurement. These are simple questions without the need to become an environmental scientist. These questions simply help us slow down before we accept a claim at face value. A green word is not evidence. The evidence is what makes the claim meaningful.  India’s Greenwashing Rulebook India has also begun to pay more attention to how environmental claims are communicated to a group of consumers. The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) introduced guidelines in 2024 specifically dealing with the prevention and regulation of greenwashing and misleading environmental claims. These guidelines are important because they reframe the conversation from simply using environmental words to explaining what those words actually mean. For instance, if a company uses terms such as “sustainable,” “natural,” “recyclable,” “carbon neutral” or similar environmental descriptions, consumers should be able to understand what the claim refers to. Environmental claims should not create a misleading impression through vague wording, incomplete information or visuals that suggest environmental benefits without proper explanation. The most useful way to look at this is through a simple chain: Claim → Evidence → Explanation First, what is the company claiming? Second, what evidence supports that claim? And third, has the company clearly explained the limitations or conditions behind it? This is important because the communication around environmental claims is no longer limited to traditional advertisements. The same claim can appear on a product label, Instagram post, website, marketplace listing or even inside a sustainability report. The responsibility therefore lies not only with consumers to question claims but also with companies to communicate them clearly.  The Boundary Problem Another important aspect of an environmental claim is its boundary. A product does not appear magically on a supermarket shelf. Its environmental impact can include several stages from sourcing raw materials, manufacturing and packaging to transportation, use and finally disposal. This becomes important when companies make claims about things such as carbon neutrality or recyclability. For example, saying that packaging is recyclable tells us something about the packaging. It does not necessarily mean that the entire product has a low environmental impact. Similarly, a carbon-related claim needs to explain what emissions have been included in the calculation and what method has been used. This is why the question “What does the claim cover?” becomes so important. Without knowing the boundary, a consumer may assume that a claim applies to the whole product when it applies to only one part of it.  From the Supermarket Shelf to the Shopping Cart Greenwashing is not only seen in big advertisements but can also appear in everyday situations. Imagine walking through a supermarket and seeing a product that is covered in green colours, leaves, and words such as “natural” or “eco-friendly.” Imagine shopping online and finding a product that is described as “sustainable” without much explanation. The same thing can happen while booking a hotel. A website may highlight an environmentally friendly initiative, such as reducing plastic bottles or encouraging guests to reuse towels. These actions may be genuine, but a consumer may still wonder what exactly makes the entire stay sustainable. The growing use of e-commerce makes this even more relevant. A product description can influence a buying decision just as much as physical packaging can. This means that checking environmental claims should not stop at advertisements. We should also take a closer look at packaging, websites, social media, product descriptions, and marketplace listings. The green message follows the consumer all the way from the advertisement to the shopping cart. India Under the Green Lens Looking at Indian examples makes the issue easier to understand because environmental claims are now becoming a part of many different industries. For instance, in the fashion industry, we increasingly come across terms such as “conscious,” “responsible,” “organic” and “recycled.” These terms can point towards genuine improvements, but we still need to understand what they refer to. If a garment is made using recycled fibres, for example, we know something about the material used, but we may not know about the environmental impact of its manufacturing, transportation, packaging, or disposal. Similarly, in the packaging sector, claims such as “100% recyclable” can sound quite straightforward. But when we look closer, recyclability can depend on the material, the design of the packaging and whether suitable collection and recycling facilities are available. The travel and hospitality sector gives us another example. Hotels and travel platforms increasingly talk about initiatives such as reducing plastic use, saving energy, or conserving water. These can certainly be useful steps, but we need to distinguish between one specific environmental initiative and a much broader claim about sustainability. These examples show us why the aim should not simply be to label a company as “good” or “bad.” Instead, we need to look at the specific claim, what it covers and what evidence supports it. After all, a company can make a genuine environmental improvement and still need to communicate that improvement more clearly. For us as consumers, understanding the difference is what makes it possible to make more informed choices. Who Is Responsible for Greenwashing? Well, this depends on who exactly we ask, but everyone plays their part in greenwashing, from big companies to social media influencers. Companies are naturally responsible for what they write on their product packaging and in their marketing materials. After all, they are the ones who decide what to write and what not to, and if they are intentionally exaggerating their sustainability, they should fix it. However, advertising agencies are also guilty because they are the ones who produce ideas and present them to the public. Meanwhile, influencers and celebrities should do more factchecking before posting a product that they position as eco-friendly. As for the consumer, we handle encouraging companies by buying their products. However, in my opinion, this is where the illusion ends. Because there is no motivation for companies to become genuinely sustainable — only to look good, gain points with customers, and increase sales through manipulative marketing. While it works fine on an emotional level, it does little to help the environment. Why Do Companies Greenwash? So, now we know what greenwashing is and how it works. But why do companies do it? Well, as I mentioned above, companies greenwash to increase sales, attract customers, and look good. But to understand why this happens, we need to look at the bigger picture: the fact that being sustainable is now cool and desirable, not only among the youth, but also among other companies. And the companies that want to compete in terms of sustainability have two options: to genuinely become sustainable and transparent or to resort to greenwashing to make themselves look better without really changing anything. In addition, companies often have an advantage over the competition if they mention sustainability in their marketing, since customers increasingly prefer to buy from organisations that care about the environment. Therefore, even if the company is only ‘a little bit green,’ it still has a good chance to attract customers who are just looking for eco-friendliness in the products. So, why not greenwash? When Did Greenwashing Become Such a Big Problem? Greenwashing has always been around and, unfortunately, it is not going anywhere. The reason for this is simple: companies want to be profitable and popular and therefore find ways to make themselves look better than they are. However, recently, this problem has grown significantly due to two reasons: social media and growing awareness of environmental problems. On the one hand, organisations now have more opportunities to promote their products and services, so they use them extensively to spread information about their ‘eco-friendliness.’On the other hand, people are now much more aware of environmental issues and therefore are better able to identify greenwashing. Consequently, it is now much easier for both companies and consumers to take part in and combat greenwashing. How Does Greenwashing Work? Greenwashing usually works by appealing to consumers’ emotions and presenting information in an attractive way rather than providing specific facts. The most common greenwashing techniques include vague language, green visuals, and misleading comparisons. For example, a company that wants to promote its new product as eco-friendly can do so by writing vague statements like ‘better for the planet.’ Better for whom? For what? There is no specific information – only general, unsubstantiated praise. Another example is using leaf-shaped logos, placing images of forests and fields on the packages, and other tricks to attract the attention of eco-conscious customers. Finally, many organisations try to hide the fact that they are not as sustainable as they would like us to believe by emphasising one positive trait (such as reforestation) while ignoring the rest (such as mass production). Thus, when evaluating an advertised product, it is essential to go beyond the superficial and analyse the facts carefully. Greenwashing in India India is home to hundreds of millions of consumers who are eager to keep up with the latest global trends. Sustainability is now a popular concept not only among environmental activists but also among the youth and influencers. Moreover, social media has made it much easier to spread information – so companies are now competing to be the first to introduce sustainable practices and label their products as eco-friendly. However, as in the rest of the world, this has led to the proliferation of greenwashing in India. On the one hand, this is logical: companies want to increase sales and profits, so they will do everything possible to attract the attention of customers. On the other hand, India is a huge market with many different players, so companies often resort to manipulation to stand out from the competition. Consequently, it is now becoming increasingly difficult for Indian consumers to distinguish between genuinely sustainable companies and those that only want to sell their products by labelling them as eco-friendly. Examples That Help Understanding Greenwashing Better Let us take a closer look at some simple but striking examples of greenwashing. Case 1: Eco-Friendly Bottle Suppose a company produces a bottle made of plastic and markets it as eco-friendly. However, they do not provide any specific information about what makes it sustainable. Meanwhile, we can assume that the bottle contains a certain amount of recycled material, the production of which is less harmful to the environment. If this is not mentioned, it may be an example of greenwashing. Case 2: Made with Natural Ingredients A cosmetic company markets one of its creams as 100% natural. This seems like a safe and eco-friendly choice. However, suppose our curiosity exceeds our trust in the company, and we start looking for information – and we find that the term ‘natural’ means nothing because no specific ingredients are shown. If so, it might be an example of greenwashing: not false advertising, per se, but a statement that is too vague to be considered reliable. How Can India Combat Greenwashing? India has long been taking steps to regulate advertising and hold companies accountable for false or unsubstantiated claims. For example, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) keeps a set of guidelines for advertisers that cover environmental advertising and prohibit deceptive practices. Meanwhile, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has issued guidelines banning false and deceptive advertising, including misleading environmental claims. Therefore, in India, we will not see unsubstantiated statements on product packaging, such as ‘100% natural’ or ‘eco-friendly’, because companies can be fined for making these claims without providing sufficient evidence. This is a step towards combating greenwashing, because now companies must be much more honest and specific in their statements. Conclusion: We Need Green Action, Not Green Advertising So, what can we take away from this discussion of greenwashing? The main idea is that while a company can look eco-friendly on the outside, it may be doing extraordinarily little to help the environment. Green labels on product packaging, eco-words in marketing, and statements about sustainability may seem nice, but they often conceal a lack of real action. However, it is important to understand that companies may resort to such tactics for many reasons some of which are completely honest. Therefore, instead of judging companies too harshly, we should encourage those who are genuinely striving for sustainability to improve and be transparent about their actions. We should support initiatives that have a real impact on the environment, such as reducing emissions or cutting down on plastic use, rather than rewarding vague statements with our money. In addition, I believe that regulators should continue to impose stricter regulations on those who resort to greenwashing and manipulate consumers. Remember that environmentalism should inspire us to do our part and when we interact with companies, we should ask ourselves what that part might be. We should not reward those who only want to make money by manipulating us and call out those who do not follow through on their promises. After all, the planet needs honest and transparent companies and so do we. References/ Sources : Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India https://consumeraffairs.gov.in/ Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) https://www.ascionline.in/ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) https://www.unep.org/ Federal Trade Commission (FTC), United States https://www.ftc.gov/ ...Read more

23 Sep 2026

Five dinners across Cape Town become five unexpected windows into hunger, migration, safety, exile and joy—proving that sometimes a city reveals itself most honestly around the dinner table. SummaryA five-night dinner trail across Cape Town becomes an unexpected way of understanding the city beyond its food. The first evening, two slices of pizza offered to a hungry man turn dinner into a reflection on hunger, housing and inequality. A conversation with Rashid, a Bengali-speaking migrant from Barisal, reveals how migration can be shaped by skill, family networks, risk and hope. A rushed meal of sushi and chips highlights how business hours, transport and safety influence who can experience the city after dark. Kurdish food opens a conversation about exile, cultural identity and the experience of a people without a sovereign state. The final evening at Mama Africa brings music, food and celebration, leaving the larger lesson that Cape Town's dinner tables can reveal stories of struggle, movement, memory and joy. Five evenings of hunger migration exile safety and joy, brought to you by an incorrigible traveler, Ujjwal K ChowdhuryI came to Cape Town for an official programme. After a day of listening and speaking, the body keeps its own score. For five nights, Mathew and I ate in five different rooms. The food changed, but so did the city around it. By the end, dinner had become a way of reading Cape Town through hunger, migration, safety, exile and joy. Night One: Pizza and the Two Pieces That Changed the Table The first dinner was near Cape Town Station, in a modest single-storey pizza shop. We sat beside the glass wall and ordered a double-meat pizza that arrived with the confidence of a dish that had never met a small appetite. It was huge. Halfway through, a man over sixty came to the other side of the glass. Visibly hungry, he asked to be fed. He did not ask for money. He asked for food.Mathew went outside and gave him two slices. The man did not eat them. He ran to a younger man waiting nearby and handed over the pieces. Hunger had made him a messenger before it made him a diner. I have seen hunger in India all my life, so it is never abstract. Yet the scene unsettled us. Cape Town is praised for beauty and administration, but recent reporting based on city data describes a housing divide: 18.8 percent live in informal housing and more than 400,000 were on the social-housing waiting list in 2024. No urban success story is complete when a meal must pass through glass. Night Two: Calamari and a Bengali Voice After the first day of the Global Entrepreneurship Network Congress at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, we wanted a simple dinner. We found a smaller restaurant and ordered chips, calamari and a drink. Halfway through, I heard the man at the cash counter speaking in a Bengali dialect close to Bangladesh.His name was Rashid, from Barisal. He had arrived in Cape Town four years earlier after eight years in Dubai. In his early twenties he had gone there with his elder brother-in-law and started as a waiter in an Indian restaurant. He learnt English and Arabic, understood the business from kitchen to counter, and grew into management.A childhood neighbour from Bangladesh had taken this restaurant on lease from an African owner and brought Rashid in on profit share. He said he earned more than twice what he had in Dubai. His family remained in Bangladesh, and he returned around Ramadan and Eid. The calamari was pleasant, but Rashid was the real meal. His journey showed me that migration travels through language, kinship, skill, risk and hope. Night Three: Sushi and Chips Before the City Shut The third evening was less dramatic, which is also a travel lesson. At seven, we went to a food mall expecting dinner and found shutters coming down. We hurriedly bought sushi, chips and whatever else could be packed, then carried it to the Holiday Inn Express. Sushi and chips made an accidental marriage, but hunger is a generous matchmaker.Cape Town does have late bars and restaurants around Long and Bree streets, but its evening life is not one continuous festival. It is shaped by location, transport, business hours and safety. Homeless people were gathering outside as shops closed, and we felt uneasy about petty theft. But I also had to correct my first impression: a person without a home is not automatically a criminal. Homelessness and crime may share an urban geography, yet they are not the same thing.We learnt that nightlife is also a map of who feels safe enough to stay outside. Cape Town can have a mountain for a backdrop while inequality and violent crime remain awake after the shutters come down. Night Four: Kurdish Food and a People Without a State By the fourth night, dinner became a question. We went to a large Mesopotamian Kurdish restaurant, described as the only Kurdish restaurant in town. It was run by Baran Kalay, a Kurdish man living in exile. I asked to meet him. He joined us, and the plates became a map.My background in International Relations education made me curious about Kurdish life and the Yazidis. Baran spoke of Kurdish communities across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, and of a diaspora beyond the region. The numbers vary, but the broad reality is clear: Kurds are one of the world's largest peoples without a sovereign state. Their language and cultural rights have been caught between nationalism, war and stronger powers.Yazidis are a distinct ethno-religious minority, many of Kurdish heritage. The 2014 ISIS assault in northern Iraq was recognised by a United Nations inquiry as genocide. Hundreds of thousands were displaced, and thousands of women and children were abducted or enslaved. The facts are unbearable; Baran's quiet way of carrying them made them heavier.He felt that attention to Palestine had been justified, while Kurdish claims for self-determination and cultural-linguistic autonomy received less sustained notice. That was his judgement. We had entered for Kurdish food and found an exile's small embassy. Every restaurant run by a displaced people serves memory without a passport. Night Five: Mama Africa and the Evening That Refused to Sit Still The last dinner was the most colourful, theatrical and expensive of the five. Mama Africa on Long Street has served Pan-African food since 1995, with live marimba, drumming and dance. Its menu crosses the continent, from Cape Malay flavours to Moroccan and Mozambican influences, with game meats such as springbok, kudu, ostrich and crocodile. I chose a fish fillet, one of the best I had eaten in a very long time.The restaurant was managed largely by African women. One young woman, younger than my daughter, came to paint my face. A marine-sciences graduate working evenings, she created a design that reminded me of birthday face painting in Bengali families. For a few minutes, she turned my face into a small festival, drawing a bright shore across my forehead.Then the marimba began, dancers entered and performers pulled the audience into the room. We ate, laughed and danced among mostly foreign patrons. The evening did package Africa as dinner, music and movement, but the warmth was genuine. People were working, creating and hosting, not performing a museum piece. The bill made us wince, but some evenings charge for memory as much as fish. Five dinners, five recognitions The pizza taught me that food can become a moral choice before it becomes culinary. Rashid showed me that a restaurant may be an immigration story with a cash counter. The closed food mall revealed how safety shapes a city's hours. Baran reminded me that cuisine can carry a people through exile. Mama Africa restored the right to end a serious journey with music and colour. I left with conference notes, but remember the people who appeared when the plates arrived. A city is often more honest at dinner than Hashtags#CapeTown, #CapeTownTravel, #CapeTownTravelogue, #SouthAfricaTravel, #CapeTownFood, #FoodAndTravel, #TravelStories, #TravelWriting, #CapeTownLife, #CapeTownCulture, #AfricanCuisine, #MigrationStories, #UrbanInequality, #HumanStories, #TravelAndCulture, #LongStreetCapeTown, #HoutBay, #KurdishCulture, #MamaAfrica, #GlobalEntrepreneurship, #CulturalExchange, #ResponsibleTravel, #TravelExperiences, #ExploreCapeTown ...Read more

22 Sep 2026

What does it mean to travel responsibly in a country as diverse as India? Taking a trip from the Himalayas to the beaches of Goa may be fun, but this kind of tourism takes a toll not only on the environment but also on the local community. In this article, the author focuses on green travel and its importance in supporting ecosystems and boosting the local economy. Learn more about how to be a mindful tourist in this article. SummaryThe article addresses the importance of responsible and green travel and tourism in India. It also focuses on the influence of tourism on the country’s environment, community, and culture. This article raises awareness of tourist activities that have negative effects on the environment and cultural heritage of the country and offers workable solutions. The author uses Kerala, Ladakh, and popular Indian destinations as examples. The problems of overcrowding, use of resources, and impact of social media are discussed. The solutions offered by the author of the article include sustainable tourism practices in other countries like Bhutan, Costa Rica, and Venice. However, the author claims that sustainable travel requires a balance to ensure that tourism has a positive impact on the local community, environment, and culture. The main message of this article is that travellers should consider the impact of their travel and follow responsible tourism practices when discovering the country. Green travel is presented as the best way to explore India while conserving it for future generations.   Introduction: Can We Travel Without Leaving a Mess Behind? Imagine we are standing in the middle of a beautiful Himalayan village. The air is fresh, the mountains are covered with snow, and everything feels untouched. We take a few photographs, buy a bottle of water, eat at a local cafe, and continue we journey. But what happens after we leave? The plastic bottle stays behind. The food waste goes somewhere. The village must deal with more traffic, more water consumption, and more waste than it had before. Meanwhile, the people who have lived there for generations may slowly find their homes and traditions changing to accommodate tourists. This raises an important question: Can we really call travel sustainable if the destination pays the price for our experience? This is where the idea of green travel comes in. Green travel is not simply about taking a train instead of a flight or carrying a reusable water bottle. It is about thinking about the environmental and social impact of our journeys and making choices that allow both people and places to receive help from tourism. India is an especially interesting country in this context. From the mountains of Ladakh and Sikkim to the beaches of Goa and Kerala, from the deserts of Rajasthan to the forests of the Northeast, every region has its own environment, traditions, food, crafts, and communities. So, the real question is not “Where should we travel?” It is: “How should we travel?” What Exactly Is Green Travel? Green travel, also called sustainable travel or responsible tourism, means travelling in a way that tries to minimise environmental damage while supporting local people and respecting the culture of the destination. At first, this might sound complicated. But the idea is quite simple. It means using fewer resources, producing less waste, respecting nature, supporting local businesses and being considerate towards the people who live in the places we visit. For example, staying in a locally owned homestay instead of an international hotel can keep more money within the local community. Eating local food instead of always choosing familiar fast-food chains can support farmers, cooks, and small businesses. Buying directly from an artisan can help traditional crafts survive. And sometimes, green travel can be as simple as not treating a beautiful place like a disposable tourist attraction.  Green Travel Is More Than the Journey Green travel doesn't end with choosing a less polluting mode of transport; it includes almost every decision taken during the journey such as where the traveller stays, how much water and electricity they use, what they eat, what they buy, how they get rid of their waste, and the way they interact with local communities and wildlife. Even if a trip begins by taking a train rather than a flight, it can still not be regarded as sustainable if the traveller stays in a hotel that wastes a large amount of water, uses a great deal of disposable products, and contributes little to the local economy. Accommodation is a significant element of the situation. Hotels and resorts use electricity for lighting and air conditioning, water for showers, laundry, cooking, swimming pools, and the gardens, and produce a great deal of food and packaging waste. If an accommodation business is to be genuinely responsible it must go beyond superficial environmental signs and minor actions; solar energy, the collection of rainwater, the treatment of wastewater, waste sorting, the use of energy-efficient appliances, and the provision of locally sourced food and employment for local people are better signs of sustainability. India has already started to apply these ideas to its tourism planning. The National Strategy for Sustainable Tourism issued by the Ministry of Tourism is placed alongside the national strategies concerning rural tourism, home-stays, and ecotourism. An example of this is Kerala's Responsible Tourism model, in which environmental protection is considered together with local employment, community participation and economic benefits. When a Destination Has More Tourists Than It Can Handle When the number of visitors grows faster than a destination can cope with, tourism becomes a complicated matter. A place may be beautiful enough to draw in thousands of tourists, but that does not mean that its roads, water supply, waste disposal systems, or natural environment are able to deal with having thousands of people there every day. That is when the concept of carrying capacity becomes relevant. Simply put, it means the amount of tourism a place can handle before environmental or social harm reaches unacceptable levels. When too many people visit, it can cause traffic, lead to shortages of water, result in overflowing waste, create noise, cause damage to natural areas and increase the pressure on residents. In India, this matter is currently under consideration. The Tourism Department of Kerala has arranged for capacity assessments for various hill stations, such as Munnar and Wayanad, considering environmental, social, and economic factors. The problem is not merely one of limiting the number of tourists but involves working out how many can be accommodated without harming the residents and the environment. A similar issue can be seen in places like Manali, Shimla, Goa, and certain areas of Ladakh since seasonal tourism can have a major effect on the local infrastructure. This leads to a significant question—should a destination always aim to draw in more tourists or should it at times concentrate on managing tourism more effectively?  The Local Economy Behind a Green Trip Green travel also concerns the places where the traveller's money is spent. Although tourism can create jobs for hotel staff, drivers, guides, farmers, artisans, cooks and small business owners, these jobs are not necessarily shared among the people who live in the destination. Opting for a homestay that is owned by locals rather than one that is part of a big chain, having a meal at a local restaurant rather than at an international chain, and hiring a local guide as well as buying directly from an artisan can all contribute to making sure that a greater portion of the tourist's money stays in the destination. Sustainability is not only an environmental issue but also an economic one. Ladakh has likewise been promoting community-based tourism and homestay schemes which aim to have the villages take part in tourism. The concept is that tourists get the opportunity to experience everyday life in the area while the income from tourism flows to the households in the community. The concept of a "green trip" is altered in that it does not merely involve leaving less waste but also raises the question of who receives help from my visit. When a Beautiful Place Becomes Too Popular The way in which destinations are discovered has been fundamentally altered by social media; a waterfall, a village road or a mountain viewpoint which was previously known to local people can now attract thousands of visitors after one reel goes viral. The issue is that visibility can increase faster than infrastructure. A place that is fragile might not have sufficient parking, toilets, waste collection facilities, or public transport to deal with a sudden rise in the number of visitors. Additionally, more tourists can also disturb the local wildlife, the vegetation, and the normal way of life in local communities. That is the reason responsible travel in the Instagram era also demands digital responsibility. When travellers and influencers share a location with their thousands of followers, they should think about the consequences of doing so. It is not always harmful to share a beautiful place, but not taking care when revealing the precise location of a fragile ecosystem can in fact lead to the kind of damage which has caused the site to be worth visiting. We should not aim at preventing people from finding out about new destinations but rather at distributing tourism over different places and times, and we should get tourists to follow the local rules and, where possible, avoid the sensitive areas. What can India pick up from the rest of the world? India is by no means the only nation which is trying to cope with the environmental and social effects of tourism; various destinations worldwide have tried out different methods of making tourism more responsible. For instance, Bhutan has created a tourism strategy based on the concept of high-value, low-volume tourism rather than just aiming to increase the number of visitors. The wider takeaway is that a destination does not have to become more successful just because it constantly raises the number of tourists. Costa Rica is also a good example since its tourism sector is closely connected with ecotourism, protected areas, and biodiversity; experience in this country demonstrates that natural environments can form part of a nation's tourism economy and thus provide a motive for protecting them. There is also the case of Venice, which presents the contrary problem: the effects of excessive tourism. The city has had to try out various methods for dealing with the pressure from visitors since tourism affects the infrastructure and daily life. They illustrate the fact that a single formula cannot be applied to green travel. While some places concentrate on restricting the number of visitors, others stress conservation, some emphasise community involvement and others deal with the problem of overcrowding. The key point for India is that tourism should be designed about the capacity and nature of each destination rather than using the number of visitors as the only criterion for measuring success. India Is Not Just a Destination One of the biggest mistakes we make while travelling is thinking of places as destinations rather than homes. For us, Varanasi may be a travel destination. For someone else, it is home. For us, a village in Himachal Pradesh may be a peaceful holiday location. For the people living there, it is where their families, farms, temples, and traditions have existed for generations. The same applies to Rajasthan, Kerala, Assam, Sikkim, Ladakh and hundreds of other places across India. When tourists arrive, they bring money, employment, and opportunities. But they can also bring traffic, waste, noise, rising prices, and pressure on natural resources. Therefore, green travel should not only ask: “Did I enjoy my trip?” It should also ask: “Did the place benefit from my visit?” And even more importantly: “Would the people living there want tourists like me to come back?”  When Tourism Helps and When It Hurts Tourism can be extremely valuable to local communities. A tourist staying in a homestay provides income to a family. A traveller buying a handwoven shawl supports an artisan. A local guide earns a living by sharing knowledge about their region. A small restaurant gets customers. A taxi driver gets work. In this way, tourism can help communities become economically stronger. But tourism can also create problems when it grows without planning. Think about a popular hill station during peak season. Hundreds or thousands of tourists arrive within a few days. Roads become crowded, hotels consume massive amounts of water and electricity, waste increases and local infrastructure become overwhelmed. The irony is that people often travel to such places because they want to escape crowded cities, only to make the destination look like another crowded city. This is one of the biggest challenges of modern tourism: how do we enjoy a place without slowly destroying the very thing that attracted us to it? Green Travel Is Also About Culture Environmental sustainability is only one side of the story. India's culture is deeply connected to its environment. Our food, clothing, architecture, festivals, crafts, and lifestyles have developed around local geography and available resources. A traditional house in Kerala is different from one in Rajasthan because the climate is different. Food in Bengal is different from food in Punjab because local agriculture and culture are different. Himalayan communities have developed ways of living suited to their mountains.  When we travel responsibly, we are not only protecting forests, beaches, and mountains. We are also protecting ways of life. Imagine visiting Rajasthan and buying a locally made handicraft directly from the artisan who created it. Or staying in a family-run homestay in Sikkim and eating food prepared with locally sourced ingredients. These experiences do more than provide tourists with souvenirs and photographs. They give local traditions an economic reason to survive. The Problem With “Tourist Culture” There is nothing wrong with tourism changing over time. Cultures naturally evolve. The problem begins when local culture is changed entirely to satisfy what tourists expect to see. A village may start replacing traditional food with dishes designed specifically for tourists. Local shops may sell mass-produced “traditional” souvenirs imported from somewhere else. Traditional performances may become short shows performed only because tourists expect them. Eventually, the culture being sold to tourists may have extraordinarily little connection with the culture of the people themselves. This is why responsible travel should encourage authenticity rather than performance. Travellers should be curious about local traditions, but they should also respect that not every cultural practice exists for entertainment. Sometimes the most respectful thing a tourist can do is simply see, listen, and learn. So, How Can We Travel Greener? Green travel does not require us to stop travelling. It simply requires us to make better choices. We can begin with transportation. Whenever practical, trains and public transport can be better choices than short flights or multiple private vehicles. India has one of the world's largest railway networks, making train travel an important choice for domestic tourism. We can also reduce waste by carrying *reusable* bottles and bags instead of constantly buying disposable ones. But the most important choice is where our money goes. Instead of automatically choosing large chains, travellers can consider locally owned hotels, home-stays, restaurants, guides and shops. Because every rupee spent by a tourist is also a vote for the kind of tourism they want to support. What About Food? Food is one of the easiest ways to experience a culture and one of the easiest ways to support it. India has an extraordinary variety of regional cuisines. Yet tourists sometimes travel thousands of kilometres only to eat the same food they could have ordered at home. If we are travelling to Kerala, why not try a local meal? In Rajasthan, why not explore traditional dishes? In Bengal, why not eat at a small local restaurant? In the Northeast, why not learn about regional ingredients and cooking traditions? Eating locally can support farmers, small restaurants, home cooks, and local food producers. And there is another benefit: We might discover that the most memorable part of our trip was not the monument we photographed, but the meal we shared with someone. Green Travel in the Age of Instagram Social media has completely changed the way we travel. Today, many people discover destinations through Instagram reels, YouTube videos, and travel influencers. A beautiful photograph can turn an unknown location into a tourist hotspot overnight. But there is a problem- A-place can become famous much faster than its infrastructure can handle. A quiet village suddenly receives thousands of visitors. A secluded waterfall becomes a selfie spot. A small mountain road becomes filled with cars. And then the same social media that made the place famous starts showing photographs of overflowing bins and overcrowding. This is why travellers and influencers have a responsibility. Not every beautiful location needs to become the next viral destination. Sometimes, responsible travel means not revealing a fragile location to millions of people simply for views. The People Behind Our Holidays There is another side of tourism that we often forget. The hotel employee who cleans our room. The driver who takes us through unfamiliar roads. The local guide who explains the history of a monument. The woman who makes the handicraft we buy. The street-food seller who prepares our evening snack. The family that opens its home as a homestay. Tourism is not only about places. It is about people. Green travel should therefore also mean treating tourism workers with dignity and respect. Pay fairly. Do not bargain aggressively with small artisans just to save a few rupees. Follow local rules. Ask before photographing people, especially during religious or cultural activities. A sustainable holiday should not be enjoyable for the tourist at the expense of someone else's dignity.  A Different Kind of Luxury For a long time, luxury travel has been associated with five-star hotels, private cars, and extravagant experiences. But our definition of luxury needs to change. What if luxury meant waking up in a quiet village where the air is clean? What if it meant eating food grown locally? What if it meant staying in a beautiful homestay where our money directly supports a family? What if it meant travelling slowly enough to understand a place? In that sense, green travel is not about having less of an experience. It can mean having more of an experience. Instead of rushing through ten tourist attractions, we might spend an afternoon talking to a local artisan. Instead of taking a quick photograph, we might learn the story behind a centuries-old tradition. The journey becomes less about collecting places and more about understanding them. Green Travel in India: From Tourists to Travellers The biggest difference is in the mindset. A tourist may ask: “What can I get from this place?” A responsible traveller might ask: “What can I learn from this place and what can I give back?”  This does not mean every traveller needs to plant a tree, volunteer for a week or become an environmental activist. Sometimes responsible travel is much simpler- carry our waste, respect local customs, use water carefully, avoid disturbing wildlife, support local businesses, use public transport, when possible, buy genuine local products, don't damage monuments, don't litter, don't treat local people as part of the scenery. Small actions may seem insignificant individually, but millions of travellers making better choices can create a significant difference. Green Travel in India: Who Is Walking the Talk?  India’s attitude towards tourism is as controversial as ever, although a record-breaking influx of visitors creates a significant positive impact on the local economy, generating employment and awareness about the country’s overall attractiveness. However, the potential adverse effect on the environment should not be understated. What are the responsible travel practices in India, and which should be promoted? There are some promising ideas at the state level that serve as an inspiration for other regions, aiming to create ecological friendliness. For example, Sikkim, a state in India, has taken remarkable steps towards encouraging an organic lifestyle and reducing plastic waste. Although this step may seem a minor issue, it has the potential to address a significant threat to food waste while also redirecting the attention from hard-to-control mass tourism to arranging more personalised and business-like cooperation between locals and visitors. It can serve as a model for similar projects in other areas. At the same time, one should be cautious about “green” labels that often conceal no actions. A hotel that positions itself as an eco-friendly accommodation can have saving water and electricity at the heart of its operations.  However, the fact that the resort is built in the middle of rice terraces and tea plantations does not necessarily mean that it is an eco-resort. The use of certain words (eco-, nature-friendly) and the presence of green elements may be misleading if the seller does not really care about the environment. In this situation, the responsibility lies with the tourist to research the hallmarks of sustainable travel in India. The Future of Travel: Should We Travel Less or Travel Better?  The answer may not be that we should stop travelling. Travel has enormous value. It allows people to understand cultures different from their own, creates employment and brings communities together. The challenge is to make tourism more responsible. India is likely to see more domestic and international tourism in the coming years. More people will travel, more destinations will become popular, and more businesses will depend on tourism. Therefore, the question is not whether tourism will grow. It is whether it will grow responsibly. Conclusion: Travel the World, But Leave Room for It to Breathe Travel gives us something extraordinary. We get to temporarily step outside our own lives and enter someone else's world. We see different landscapes, taste unfamiliar food, hear different languages, and discover traditions that may be completely different from our own. But with that privilege comes responsibility. A beautiful mountain is not just a photograph. A beach is not just a place for a sunset reel. A village is not just a backdrop. A monument is not just an Instagram location. They are homes, ecosystems, histories, and livelihoods. Green travel asks us to remember this. It tells us that the best traveller is not necessarily the one who visits the most places, takes the most photographs, or spends the most money. The best traveller is the one who leaves a place as beautiful as they found it and leaves the people there better off because they came. So, the next time we plan a holiday, don't only ask: “Where do you want to go?” Ask: “How do you want to travel?” Because travelling sustainably is not about seeing less of India. It is about seeing India more responsibly- and leaving enough of it for the people who will come after us. References / Sources Ministry of Tourism, Government of India — National Strategy for Sustainable Tourism (2022) https://www.tourism.gov.in/ Press Information Bureau, Government of India — Sustainable Tourism Initiatives https://www.pib.gov.in/indexm.aspx?reg=48&lang=2 Administration of the Union Territory of Ladakh — Holistic Homestay Support Framework https://ladakh.gov.in/ ...Read more

22 Sep 2026

From ostriches and baboons to seals and endangered African penguins, a day around Cape Town's wildlife becomes an unexpected lesson in humility, conservation and the limits of human entitlement. SummaryA journey across the Cape Peninsula turns into a series of close encounters with Cape Town's remarkable wildlife. At an ostrich farm, the birds' unusual behaviour and division of breeding responsibilities offer an amusing reminder that nature has its own systems of survival. The journey continues through Table Mountain National Park, where baboons, antelope and a snake reveal a landscape that does not exist simply for human entertainment. At Duiker Island, Cape fur seals demonstrate the difference between observing wildlife and treating it as a performance for tourists. The final encounter at Boulders introduces African penguins, whose declining numbers highlight the pressures created by food scarcity, overfishing, pollution, habitat loss and climate change. The day ultimately becomes a reflection on responsible wildlife tourism and the uncomfortable truth that animals are living beings first, not attractions created for human itineraries. People travel thousands of miles to meet people, admire architecture and photograph nature. On my last full day in Cape Town, nature reversed the arrangement: it gave me appointments with animals, and I arrived with a camera and the usual confidence that the world was arranged for our inspection. A short date with animals that Ujjwal K Chowdhury will remember for a long time. The Peninsula at the Edge We set out for the Cape Peninsula, toward the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. The names sound interchangeable, but they are not. The Cape of Good Hope is the celebrated southwestern promontory; Cape Point is the nearby headland with two lighthouses. The real southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, a fact geography supplies whenever tourism gets too poetic. Bartolomeu Dias called this coast the Cape of Storms in 1488; Portugal's King John II later gave it the hopeful name that survived. All of it lies within Table Mountain National Park, stretching roughly 70 kilometres from Signal Hill to Cape Point. This is not merely a mountain reserve but part of the Cape Floral Kingdom, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape where fynbos - fine, tough, fire-adapted vegetation - produces abundance from stingy soil. Proteas, ericas and restios fill the slopes, while the King Protea, South Africa's national flower, announces that elegance need not be delicate. The road also offered a lesson in Cape Town's social geography. Hout Bay and Chapman's Peak carry the glamour of sea-facing homes and high property values. In the same wider valley stands Imizamo Yethu, an informal settlement whose isiXhosa name means "our common effort." Beauty and inequality share the same view. The mountain does not hide who lives beside it and who crosses it for work. The Ostrich with the Night Shift At an ostrich farm, a few birds came close to the wire, not quite tame and not interested in our passports. The males wore black with white wing feathers; the females a quieter grey. The largest living bird cannot fly, but it can run at extraordinary speed, pivot on two toes and look at a tourist with the authority of a creature that knows the tourist cannot keep up. Ostriches eat mostly plants, along with insects and other small items, and can go for long periods without drinking. During breeding, a male may court several females and scrape a communal nest. The female incubates by day, blending into the earth; the male takes the night shift, disappearing into darkness. Even the ostrich has a practical division of labour. Humans, with our committees and relationship podcasts, still negotiate who will answer the message. The guide asked whether Indians eat ostrich meat. Ostrich farming is an established Western Cape economy, linked to meat, leather, feathers and tourism, especially around Oudtshoorn. I understand that livelihoods are complicated. Still, after a bird tilted its head at me with comic dignity, I could not imagine lunching on it. I claim no saintliness - human food systems are full of contradictions - but that bird had become a person in my travel story, and people are difficult to order medium rare. A Landscape that Refused to Be One Country We drove through long stretches of the reserve, where fynbos lay low beneath the wide sky. The hills, sea and sharp light made the landscape feel like a meeting between the Andes and the Himalayas, with a South African accent. In the distance, eland and other antelope moved across the ground. The park includes bontebok, red hartebeest and zebra, but I was denied the cinematic herd I wanted. Instead, a large snake crossed the road. It was dark, marked with gold, and unimpressed by our vehicle. I could not identify it, so I will not pretend to be a field biologist after one glance through a windscreen. It slid away with the confidence of a citizen who had not requested a road. Humans name everything and behave as if naming grants ownership. The snake needed neither label nor applause. The Bay that Was Named by Mistake At Mariner's Wharf in Hout Bay, we took a boat toward Duiker Island, a rocky haul-out for Cape fur seals. This was the Atlantic side; False Bay lies beyond the peninsula, toward Simon's Town and warmer waters. Its name is an old navigational joke: sailors returning from the East mistook Cape Hangklip for Cape Point and confused False Bay with Table Bay. A human error became a permanent label - proof that our mistakes receive official signage. The seals were the stars. Some lay in heaps on the rocks, some rolled into the water, and others surfaced with whiskers twitching as if mildly interested. They were Cape fur seals, not plush toys: social, vocal divers that rest on land and hunt fish and squid at sea. Their eyes looked gentle, but gentleness is not consent and wildness is not an invitation to touch. Tourists were offered fish to throw to the seals for a fee. The transaction was entertaining and revealing: humans had travelled to an animal's home, charged one another for access, then bought a snack to make the animal perform near the boat. I watched without feeding them. They were capable of being magnificent without our hospitality package. The Abundant Baboons with a Streak of a Memory The baboons seemed to be everywhere in the Nature Reserve Park—along the roadside, on the rocky slopes and near the bends where our vehicle slowed to watch them. At first glance, they reminded me of the Indian monkeys familiar from towns, temples and childhood stories, though these animals were a little larger, heavier and more powerfully built. Still, resemblance is not identity: these were baboons, not the Indian monkeys, with their own families, calls, hierarchies and unruly intelligence. Their presence also brought back my childhood name, “Babun,” a name my mother and her side of the family used with affection. My maternal elder cousin mischievously turned it into “Baboon” and would explain that I resembled the real animals because of my restlessness and occasional flashes of anger. Looking at them now, I could not dismiss his diagnosis entirely. The baboons at least seemed honest about their moods; when annoyed, they showed it openly. Humans, by contrast, often hide their irritation behind polite smiles, official emails and the remarkable claim that they are “fine.” Penguins at the Edge The day's final encounter came at Boulders in Simon's Town. First there was one African penguin, then two, then a procession from the rocks, sand and sea. They were small, upright and determined, with the comic seriousness of officials arriving late to a meeting. Their braying calls explain the old nickname "jackass penguin," though the birds have done nothing to deserve it. African penguins are the only penguin species breeding on the African continent, along the coasts of South Africa and Namibia. The Boulders colony began in 1983 and is one of the few land-based colonies visitors can see from boardwalks. The boards keep fingers, shoes and selfie sticks away from birds already under pressure. The signs say do not touch or feed them; for once, a tourist instruction is also a moral philosophy. Their bodies are marvels of adaptation. They eat sardines and anchovies, dive through cold water, then return to rest. Salt glands above their eyes remove excess salt. Once a year they moult completely, staying ashore for roughly three weeks while replacing feathers on stored fat. They sleep in short spells between feeding, guarding and colony negotiations. It is a demanding life, made harder by food scarcity, overfishing, pollution, habitat loss and climate change. The African penguin is globally Critically Endangered, with fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs remaining. That statistic sat uneasily beside the tourists' delight. The colony supports conservation work, guides, restaurants and guesthouses, but the penguins are not a tourism product first. They are trying to survive the consequences of human appetite. People often say that penguins choose one partner for life and die soon after a partner dies. The truth is less sentimental: many pairs remain together across breeding seasons and share incubation and chick-rearing, but a survivor can re-pair. Nature does not need romantic exaggerations. The real lesson is harder. Penguins keep returning, feeding, moulting and raising young while the sea changes. Humans, who write poems about loyalty, are often less reliable with the planet that feeds us. By evening, I had not automatically become a better human. I had been reminded that animals do not exist to decorate our itineraries. We travel thousands of miles to see them while they remain busy living, feeding, resting and surviving. Their patience is not permission. Their beauty is not property. Cape Town gave me a day with animals; they returned the gift as embarrassment. They were trying to stay alive. We were making captions and clicking photographs. ...Read more

22 Sep 2026

A humorous short travelogue by Ujjwal K Chowdhury. A day in Cape Town turns unexpectedly epic as wine, history, food and friendship send a simple sightseeing trip into a very small Napoleon-inspired adventure. SummaryA day off in Cape Town becomes an adventurous city tour through Constantia, Hout Bay and Camps Bay. The journey begins at Groot Constantia, where centuries of wine history connect the estate to figures such as Napoleon, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. A wine tasting, including the celebrated Grand Constance, turns an ordinary afternoon into a memorable experience. The trip continues through Hout Bay, where seafood, conversations and the harbour add a more local flavour to the day. By Camps Bay, the combination of wind, waves and an ambitious attempt to confront the Atlantic provides the day's comic climax. By the time the red bus returns to Long Street, the temporary sense of imperial courage has disappeared, leaving behind a funny and unforgettable Cape Town memory. Cape Town had given us a day off after two intense days at the Global Entrepreneurship Network’s Africa Congress. Mathew and I, exhausted but unwilling to behave like exhausted men, decided to explore the city on the red hop-on hop-off bus. After breakfast, we boarded at Long Street, armed with cameras, curiosity and the dangerous confidence of two visitors who believed the timetable would obey them. Our first major stop was Constantia, Cape Town’s green wine country—part vineyard, part living museum, and part very successful argument for postponing work. Groot Constantia dates back to 1685, when Simon van der Stel established what is regarded as South Africa’s oldest wine-producing farm. Cape Dutch buildings, ancient trees and orderly vineyards rolled down the slopes as though history itself had been landscaped. Its fame travelled across Europe. Frederick the Great of Prussia and Louis Philippe were among the celebrated buyers of Constantia wine. Jane Austen mentioned it in Sense and Sensibility as a remedy for a broken heart, while Charles Dickens gave it a supporting role in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Napoleon, too, was served Constantia during his exile on St Helena.  At the cellar, our guide Thabesa gave us a detailed dekho of the winemaking process. Red wine, we learnt, is fermented at a warmer temperature, while white wine prefers a cooler and more delicate arrangement—rather like guests at a Bengali wedding. The estate’s old bottles, labels and stories made the centuries feel as if they were still resting quietly inside the walls. Then came the official tasting: five wines, some red, some white, some dry, some sweet, some slightly bitter and all presented with the solemnity usually reserved for a diplomatic treaty. After the stipulated five, Mathew launched a diplomatic campaign for a sixth—the famous Grand Constance, the modern naturally sweet wine made from Muscat de Frontignan and associated with the old Constantia legend.  I assumed the request would be politely rejected. But Thabesa was kind. Perhaps Mathew’s sincerity helped. Perhaps my video of her and the promise of a good still photograph had quietly strengthened our case. She brought out an empty case and bottle for a picture, followed by two cut-glass wine glasses containing a small serving each. The wine was smooth, rich and almost dangerously friendly. It slipped down like a gentleman and arrived in the bloodstream like a military commander. Within ten minutes, I felt Napoleon enter me. My walking speed increased. My laughter became louder. My voice rose into a patriotic high pitch. I began speaking casually about doing difficult things immediately, efficiently and preferably before lunch. Mathew watched me with the amused concern of a man travelling with a newly self-appointed emperor. At Hout Bay, we stopped at Mariner’s Wharf for beer, chips and fried snoek. I jumped off the bus as though disembarking from a victorious campaign. A sea lion was being displayed by a man charging visitors for photographs. I ignored the commercial negotiations and clicked my own pictures. Then I wandered across the ramp into the port, speaking randomly to seamen and workers repairing, loading and unloading boats. Over lunch, I got into conversation with the two women serving us. The senior server was wonderfully talkative. We discussed three generations of her family—their education, jobs, habits and, naturally, the behaviour of their husbands. She declared that she and the other women tolerated no nonsense from their men; consequently, the men behaved with suitable caution. I laughed so heartily that even the snoek seemed to be enjoying the conversation. At Camps Bay, Napoleon attempted his grandest manoeuvre. I marched towards the rocks, determined to stand on the largest one, Vivekananda-style, and confront the Atlantic. The wind, however, had other plans. Waves roared, sand flew into my face like airborne needles, and my heroic expedition ended at the roadside—after several dozen photographs and selfies. As the red bus moved past the ocean, Table Mountain and the city, the Emperor gradually withdrew. By the time we reached Long Street, six hours after departure, I had returned to my sombre self. Mathew looked at me and pronounced, “Napoleon has left.” The lesson was unforgettable: five small wine tastings can create a cocktail of courage, but the sixth—Grand Constance—does not merely enter the bloodstream. It appoints a field marshal, gives him a cape and sends him marching towards the Atlantic. ...Read more

21 Sep 2026

Summary: Charlands of West Bengal have blurred lines of identities, which state claims whom, which country claims whom is under constant change due to fluvial dynamics and ensuing riverbank erosion and flood deluge. Bhutni diara has been ravaged by the worst flood this year and this is the hour when we are left to think about another episode of blurred identity of lives and livelihoods.  Seated in dimly lit auditorium of Jadavpur University, I was greeted by the snap of a forlorn yet mighty Ganga River. The one who engulfs lands, devouring people of their lives and livelihoods and also gifts people a bounty of harvests too. She was flowing whispering about her people - the people with blurred identities, people of chars (islands) divided by rivers, also united by the rivers to share the same fate of deprivation and fight.  Deprived of the fertile agricultural land which used to feed the belly, there stands Rubel who is compelled to smuggle rice to Bangladesh. Rubel, who is entrusted with the responsibility of the entire family wants to continue school but cannot afford such luxury. Rivers change courses and with these capitals change like chessboard, lives and livelihoods are shaped, reshaped even obliterated.  Bhutni Diara: Sandwiched between two rivers with a weeping tale  Bhutni, part of the Manikchak Community Development Block is surrounded by rivers Ganga and Fulhar. This island falls in the physiographic subregion called Diara, which is a relatively well drained flat land formed by fluvial deposition of newer alluvium. The bank of the Ganges between Bhutni and Panchanandapur is the area worst hit by left bank erosion of river Ganga.  Bhutni diara, the largest of the three diaras of Maldah is situated near the point where river Ganga begins to bend south. The river also enters into Maldah district from this point. Ganga previously split into two streams here -  The eastern channel connecting the diara to Maldah mainland. This channel has gradually silted up becoming shallow and defunct. The western channel which is now the primary flow through the deeper channel.  Fulahar joins Ganga below the relict Mara Kosi, forming a spill channel that diverts excess floodwaters away from Ganga, towards Mahananda.  Retracing James Rennell's map shows that Ganges in the first half of the 19th century, after taking a round around Rajmahal hills, flowed past the island of Bhutni Diara, following the eastern channel resulting in considerable erosion on the Maldah bank.    Fig 1: Change of Bhutni char (prepared by author using SOI toposheet and Google Earth  Image)  Geological experts and local authorities are concerned about the impeding danger of flooding impacts which can extend beyond Maldah into South Bengal if a permanent river avulsion occurs due to merging of Ganga and Fulhar rivers.   Since 1922-23, bankline surveys and maps have indicated that Ganga has kept its course stable past the Maldah diara at two sites - Rajmahal and Farakka. Ganga has been scouring a deep path for itself along its left bank as it traverses the Maldah diara after passing the circular embankment protecting Bhutni. This has caused major left bank erosion in Manikchak and Kaliachak II blocks. The diara formations are built on a foundation of sandbanks overlain by colloidal silts and thus they are prone to saturation and bank failure, as the river scours away the base material at flood stage. The water levels regularly cross the Extreme Danger Level (EDL), with the Ganga peaking well over 25.64 meters during peak surges, turning the island into an open sea.  Bhutni: Abode of children of the Lesser God  Life at Bhutni revolves around the cultivation of jute (the golden fibre) but for families flooded every now and then, children turn out to be vital contributors from being mere spectators. By the time the children reach the age of five they become skilled in stripping and jute processing. Children here lack balanced nutrition. Balancing school and work becomes another issue of concern. During harvest, tuition classes are abandoned, school attendance becomes irregular.  However, parents need to rely on the income from jute cultivation for survival. Also prolonged immersion in stagnant water causes skin problems, injuries and other health risks.  If vulnerability among the dwellers by the riverbanks and char dwellers is gauged, char dwellers are found to be more vulnerable. Basic facilities are less accessible due to physical remoteness from the mainland. Facing both floods and riverbank erosion, char dwellers face more health vulnerabilities. Availability of food is another issue. Higher sensitivity for water is found among the char dwellers as most of them use hand pumps as a source of drinking water. Lower adaptive capacity is observed in case of char dwellers as they abound in dependent population more having to fight out inadequate access to financial and social institutions.  Bhutni, literally turned into open sea: 2026 flood  Bhutni char rose first to prominence from the riverbed around 1913 and since then has been losing itself to the erosive claws of rivers Ganga and Kosi, this year being the worst since 1998. 2,00,000 people are marooned across the 3 village panchayats of Bhutni - Uttar Chandipur, Dakshin Chandipur and Hiranandapur with more than 50 villages under water and thousands of families reduced to only the summis of the embankments and tiled roofs of the concrete houses still available.  Protective embankment at Kesarpur, built a year ago, costing over 6 crores, breached within months of construction - second major breach in the Bhutni ring bund since Mid August after an earlier rupture at Kata Dam in Dakshin Chandipur, this rupture led Fulhar gush in.  Photo plate 1: Flood and embankment breaching situation at Bhutni, 2026 (Source: News tap one and The Statesman)  A fresh embankment breach was observed on 2nd September. 3 high schools, 50 primary schools have got fully submerged alongwith Bhutni - Chandipur primary health centre and the local police station. 174 in patients had to be evacuated from the health centre. 5 schools have ceased to exist from Ratua I block, 3 more from Bhutni, 1 from Manikchak. Roadway connectivity to the main block of Manikchak has completely snapped, turning boats into the only viable mode of transport for relief, medical emergencies, and pregnant women. The situation has grown severe enough that the Indian Army (Panagarh unit) has been deployed to carry out mass deep-water rescue operations. Residents are surviving without cooked food, with dry ration which are being supplied by relief convoys.      Photo plate 2: Flood situation and relief convoys at Bhutni, 2026 (Source: Urban acres and Anandabazar)  Deaths due to snakebites and electric shocks were also reported. People of Bhutni are demanding a concrete solution to the repeated flooding and river bank erosion. However, any concrete solution awaits adequate comprehension of fluvial dynamics of the rivers surrounding Bhutni. Until then, let us strengthen the hands of the hapless people of Bhutni by adequate capacity building so that they are able to atleast cope up with the impeding danger lurking in the corner.  References:  Das R and Samanta G (2022): Impact of floods and river-bank erosion on the riverine people in Manikchak Block of Malda District, West Bengal Environment, Development and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-022-02648-1 Majumdar S, Das A and Mandal S (2020): Riverbank erosion and livelihood vulnerability of the local population at Manikchak block in West Bengal, India  Environment, Development and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-02102046-z  Bhaumik I and Upadhyay C.S. (2025): Little Hands in Golden Fibre: Childhood, Work and Hope in Bhutni Island Childhood matters Vol V(3) Char: A No Man’s Land documentary by Sourav Sarangi Char Gang ek Char by Md Sadequl Islam, Barnik Prakashani  ...Read more

21 Sep 2026

Christ’s Child: El Nino and Indian Monsoon examines how El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole can influence India’s monsoon, rainfall distribution and agricultural conditions, with particular attention to the uneven and delayed 2026 monsoon. SummaryThe article examines the relationship between El Niño and the Indian monsoon, beginning with the historical tendency for El Niño years to coincide with weaker monsoon rainfall in India. It explains how the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) can sometimes modify or counteract El Niño’s influence, making the relationship more complex than a simple cause-and-effect pattern. The article then looks closely at the 2026 monsoon, including its delayed progression, rainfall deficits, intense regional downpours, floods and landslides, and uneven distribution across different parts of the country. Particular attention is given to agriculture, where irregular rainfall affected Kharif sowing, paddy cultivation, irrigation costs and crops such as rice, pulses and oilseeds, with West Bengal also experiencing delays before later rainfall helped recovery in some areas. The article highlights the wider chain linking deficient or delayed monsoon conditions with lower agricultural productivity, rural income pressures, food prices and increased dependence on groundwater. It concludes by discussing practical responses including micro-irrigation, wetland restoration, groundwater recharge, improved drainage, crop diversification and shorter-duration, drought-resistant seed varieties to strengthen resilience against increasingly variable rainfall. World Meteorological Organizations (WMO) has assumed on the possibility of an El Nino episode that it may be bad news for the Indian Monsoon. Though experts’ opinion was it would be premature to say anything definitely at the juncture, an El Nino year usually negatively impacts rains during the monsoon.  On 10th March the India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicted that day temperatures are likely to remain above normal by 5 to 7°C over Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, by 4 to 6°C over places of North East India including Delhi NCR, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh during few days in the month .  El Nino refers to the periodic large-scale warming of the ocean surface temperature in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean coupled with changes in the tropical atmosphere circulation including wind pressure and rainfall pattern (Vishwa Mohan, The Times of India, March 11, 2026).  The History:  Since 1980, there have been 14 El Nino years, 9 out of 14 have corresponded with deficient monsoon in India with rainfall at least 10% below the average. The year 2018 experienced deficit of rainfall at 9.4 %.  There is an established connection between the El Nino year and poor monsoon, though there have been exceptions. The notable example is 1997, when the monsoon was normal despite a super strong El Nino.  In 1997, a strong positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), counteracted the El Nino. IOD is a measure of the temperature difference between surfaces in the ocean’s east and west regions. This year it is predicted that the IOD will probably be positive.        Fig 1: El Nino and Indian Ocean Dipole    IMD prediction:  June - September rains are likely to be below normal in South, Central and North West India. Monsoon onset over Kerala expected to be delayed. June is predicted to be hotter than normal.  On 30th June, 2026, IMD confirmed its forecast of below normal rainfall this year.  The 2026 monsoon in India experienced delayed onset and localised deficit, with IMD forecasting overall rainfall at 90% of the long period average.  March -May: pre monsoon showers were 1313mm nationally, close to the normal rainfall of 1306mm. Rainfall in the month of June experienced a deficit. June 2026 faced a slow start particularly across central and western states like Maharashtra and Gujarat due to delayed monsoon progression. August, 2026 experienced active spells targeting Kerala, Coastal Karnataka and south interior Karnataka with heavy to extremely heavy rainfall. Widespread rain is observed across Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Gangetic West Bengal and Odisha, though average rainfall is still below normal for several interior tract. Since July localised floods and landslides affected multiple regions in Himalayan region and North East India, mainly Assam caused more than 200 deaths. Uneven progression impacted Kharif crop sowing schedule. As a result, the cost of irrigation has created a problem. There is regional stress for major summer crops like rice, pulses, and oil seeds. Initial dry spells delayed paddy, coarse cereals and pulses planting in key rainfed areas, forcing contingency plans across nearly 200 vulnerable districts. There are also recovery signs during late July and August. Revival and localised heavy spells in late July and August have helped improve soil moisture and catch up on delayed sowing in several tracts, though regional anomalies persist. In the first week of August, 2026, heavy rainfall took place over Delhi, Haryana and eastern Rajasthan. But this heavy rainfall didn't reduce the overall country's deficits in rainfall. At least 11% deficit in rainfall will persist according to IMD. Many agrarian states of the country including Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh will continue to witness deficient rainfall affecting agricultural productivity (The Times of India, Kolkata, August 10, 2026) West Bengal: Erratic and delayed start across eastern India due to early El Nino impact led to a slow beginning for Kharif crop sowing in west Bengal. But July experienced deep depressions in the Bay of Bengal and subsequent heavy rainfall. This situation eliminated deficits enabling a steady recovery in paddy transplantation. June rainfall deficits and slow progression put initial stress on agricultural pockets postponing nursery bed preparation. Districts of South and West Bengal experienced weeks of delay in the standard Aman paddy schedule as farmers awaited proper soil saturation. During the early days of monsoon, the dry pockets of the state relied on ground water to protect seed beds. In another negative, it rained in many parts of the country at the time when the sowing of Kharif crops had ended in almost 88% of the country's total sown areas. Approximately 52% of the country's net sown area is rainfed and relies directly on monsoon rainfall. During 3 July to 31 July at least 34 places of the country experienced 200mm rainfall or more in 24 hours. Umargram of Bhaldas district of Gujarat experienced 1067mm rainfall on 23 July. It is the highest recorded rainfall in a day in 2026.  Umargram, Gujarat ------- 1067mm----2026  Sohora, Meghalaya ------1563.3mm--1995  Amin div, Laksha div----1168.5----------2004  In general, the rainfall scenario of the country is as follows,  Deficit rainfall in the first week of July,2002 amounting to 35%. On 9 July depression in the Bay of Bengal initiated rainfall throughout the country. July rainfall became normal after the first week. After the second week of July the deficit rainfall amounted to 51%. August,2026 closed out with a sharp 16% nation -wide rainfall deficit. August 2026 is registered as one of India's warmest August months since 1901. Isolated heavy to extremely heavy downpours over West Bengal, Jharkhand, and parts of Madhya Pradesh, while Punjab, West Rajasthan, and the southern peninsula remained largely dry. The first 9 days of September,2002, experienced a deep of 26% deficit affecting cotton, soybean and pulses production. Over 14 states and Union Territories report severe rainfall deficiencies. Heavily affected states include Andhra Pradesh and Punjab (40%), Goa, Kerala (24%), parts of Maharashtra (Vidarbha and Mararathwada), Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Gujarat (20%) Bihar (27%), Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and parts of East and North East India including some parts of West Bengal. The scenario may change as the withdrawal of monsoon is not complete. In the third and fourth week of September the rainfall pattern may change the scenario of the monsoon rainfall in 2026. There are areas of India with above normal rainfall during the 2026 monsoon although rainfall distribution is highly uneven. Gujarat and some parts of central India IMD recorded an isolated extremely heavy rainfall in Gujarat region and northern Madhya Pradesh on 13 September.  Delayed or deficient monsoon ----------- low agricultural productivity -------------low rural income --------------- increased food prices ------------- high dependence on ground water --------- ground water depletion.    The solution:  Micro -irrigation: deployment of Drip sprinkler irrigation can reduce water conservation by 30 -50% and enhance crop productivity. Restoration of wetlands:  Wetlands are the source of water during dry spells for preparation of paddy seed beds. Wetlands can reduce the possibility of flooding during heavy rainfall. Monitoring drainage infrastructure in flood prone urban areas. Strengthening ground water recharge systems to improve water management during extreme weather. Crop switching may take place. In rain deficit areas water -heavy paddy farming may be transformed into low -water, drought- resistant alternatives like millet and oilseeds. Short - duration seeds may be used in some water deficit parts of the country.  Quick yielding seed varieties that mature faster, allowing farmers to save their yield even within a compressed monsoon timeline should be taken into consideration.  ...Read more

21 Sep 2026

  Summary: Floodwaters in Assam have hit hard this year. However, there is a dilemma between the real cause behind this deluge. Was it because of rainfall alone or were anthropic interferences have something to account for?  On 19 July, 2026 Assam experienced a disastrous flood in four districts, Shibagar, Chorai Deo, Jorhat and Golaghat. About 100 people have lost their lives. By 20 July, reports indicated that about 3.6 lakh were affected across 15-16 districts, with death rising rapidly as the flood intensified. About 40,000 hectares of crop area have been submerged, causing a significant loss of livelihood in agriculturally dependent areas. The subsequent 2026 Assam flood became much larger than the initial 19-20 July flood episode. Was the flood, the outcome of excessive rainfall or was it the result of non-scientific human activities? Why did the two rivers of Nagaland become so violent this year? There was heavy rainfall in the month of July, mainly mid-July. The important feature of the rainfall is the high concentration within a short period. Heavy downpours with landslides along the slopes of hills in Nagaland made the situation disastrous. Dikhou and Bhog doi rivers gushed down with huge water and hill slop debris.  Lower Assam in the Brahmaputra valley experiences flood almost every year. But the Upper Assam does not experience flooding as it is located in high altitude. On 19 July the people of upper Assam were surprised when the villages were flooded with water and a huge amount of silt.  One of the neighbouring states of Assam is Nagaland. It is located at a higher altitude. There is a district named Mon near Assam. Heavy downpours on 19 July caused severe landslides killing 11 persons. At the same time the rivers like Dhikhow, Nadan, Dhansiri, Disang,Janji, Taokak started flowing much above the danger level. This situation was known to the Government agencies like disaster management and civil defense. But prompt responses from these Government agencies were not taken. The situation led to disaster eventually.  Seventeen districts of Nagaland have coal mines where illegal mining activities have been continuing for a long period. This was not uncontrolled for the sake of unscrupulous businessmen. In some areas artificial lakes were formed due to unscientific extraction of coal and stone.  The hillslopes of Assam and adjoining states also experienced huge deforestation in recent years. Assam Tribune on 31 July, 26 commented, about 800 sq. km of forest was destroyed during 2013-2023. As per the report of the 'Global Forest Watch', within a time span from 2001 to 2025, 3.6 lakh acres of land were deforested. Deforestation in the hill slopes enhanced the risk of landslides and floods. The lakes in different parts of Nagaland formed by the mining activities overflowed and after breaching the embankment came down at a very high speed.  For the construction of four lane National highway huge amount of sand and rocks were extracted from the hillslopes. As a result, long stretches of hills were deforested. Excessive constuction activities, reckless deforestation and illegal sand collection from the Dikhow river have made the situation out of control.  The rivers are forced to transport huge amount of silts causing the continuous rising of riverbeds. After the disaster many deadbodies have been recovered from the silted mud. The houses in large numbers were submerged under the mud.  How human activities are responsible?  Human activities contributed to the severity of the 2026 Assam floods. Actually, the disaster is the outcome of extreme rainfall, Assam's river system, and human induced environmental changes.  Deforestation and hill slope modification enhance faster run-off. Removal of vegetation has reduced infiltration of rainwater and increased surface runoff. These again enhance soil erosion adding sediments to the rivers. Wetlands degeneration: Wetlands retain excess monsoon rainfall. Degradation of wetlands reduces natural water holding capacity of the landscape to mitigate flood waters surge. Encroachment of riverine flood plains: Expansion of settlements on natural flood plains of the rivers had already been captured. During water level rise in the major rivers of Assam caused havoc on the settlements. Infrastructural development and drainage modification are obstructing natural drainage system and alter the pathway of surface runoff. Embankments are built to restrict the river from invading the adjoining floodplains and human settlements. This is against the natural course of the rivers. Rivers during monsoon breach the embankments to maintain their previous pathway. Thus, devastating flood occurred frequently. In many cases rivers change their courses leading to river bank erosion, overtopping and embankment breaching. increasingly intense rainfall causing increased flash floods risks have enhanced the possibility of flash floods.  An important note on July 19 flood:  The initial trigger was generated largely by intensive rainfall in the neighbouring states of Nagaland on 19July. But human interference on the hillslopes and natural drainage system had determined how much damage that rainfall produces.  That can be explained in this way,  Heavy rainfall -------------Rapid run off --------------erosion-----------more sediment supply--------reduced water holding capacity -------------water spill over in the vulnerable zones ---------greater impact of flooding.  A better interpretation:  Highly concentrated rainfall and Assam's extraordinary river geomorphology created the flood hazard; human activities increased the vulnerability and, in some locations, probably increased the intensity and extent of flooding.  Is the cloud burst responsible?  The Government attributed the cause of heavy rainfall to a huge cloud burst. So, the disaster in Assam is the outcome of natural calamities though the rainfall pattern is describing the other side of the coin.  How can Assam have floods despite deficient rainfall??  Assam is one of the deficient states in rainfall in 2026. The IMD data reported on 1 September showed Assam's cumulative monsoon rainfall at 24% below the normal. Out of 35 districts of Assam 18 districts got below normal rainfall.  Assam experienced large deficit, about 40% below normal by early July. Assam got 29% below normal rainfall from 1 June -29 July. On 19 July extremely heavy rainfall took place in neighbouring Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh and parts of Assam. August 2026 was also a deficient rainfall month for Assam, although there were several spells of heavy rainfall. Assam experienced intermittent heavy rainfall, especially around the beginning and end of August, rather than continuous widespread rainfall. By the end of the August, the overall 2026 monsoon rainfall remained deficient in Assam.  The 2026 rainfall pattern of Assam was as follows  Long dry periods -------- Sudden intense rainfall ---------- Rapid river rises and flash floods ---------Relatively dry periods.  Government initiatives:  After each flood, Government initiatives include repairing and construction of embankment. Actually Assam' s primary response to flooding has been the construction of embankments, now totalling nearly 4,800 km. Every year there is constuction or repair of these embankments after or before the flood. No long- term measures have been implemented so far as to mitigate the flood and erosion problem. Unplanned growth of urban settlements are not checked, wetlands are not being saved.  ...Read more

18 Sep 2026

Cape Town, 18 September 2026  Day two of GEN’s Global Entrepreneurship Congress Africa (GEC+Africa) became a practical examination of the conditions that make entrepreneurship possible: responsive cities, useful artificial intelligence, investable women-led ventures and routes for small businesses to scale across borders. At the Cape Town International Convention Centre, the 16–17 September congress followed the theme “Connecting Africa” and brought about 2,000 entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, corporates and ecosystem organisations together. Hosted by GEN Africa and 22 On Sloane, it combined plenaries with research, pitching, exhibitions, masterclasses and investor engagement. The morning opened with Alderman James Vos, Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth in Cape Town, who presented the city’s Ease of Doing Business approach. Its real-time index tracks ten areas: public-land transfers, land-use rights, building-plan approvals, wayleaves, electricity, water, revenue and rates clearances, business licences, informal-trading permits and digitisation. “If you can measure it, you can manage it,” Vos said. The latest business survey gave public-service quality a score of 92, up from 86 in 2023/24, based on 369 businesses and 27 interviews, according to Invest Cape Town’s survey and Ease of Doing Business dashboard. Vos described support and investment reaching 100,000 small businesses in software, fintech, tourism, cybersecurity and light manufacturing, alongside a long-term infrastructure push focused on mobility, safety and energy. The objective, he said, is an ecosystem that completes rather than competes. AI and the workforce then took centre stage. Moderated by Winnie Karanu, founder and CEO of Reign Advisors, the session featured Vukani Mngxati, CEO of Microsoft South Africa, and Robert Koen, Managing Director of Amazon Sub-Saharan Africa. Mngxati compared AI with the combustion engine’s transformation of mobility and trade. He cited research showing that 64% of African workers had used AI at work in the previous year, against 54% globally, while only 35% believed their skills would remain relevant over the next three years. “The hero of AI is you,” he said. Africa, he argued, must move from consuming AI to contributing locally relevant systems, with access beyond a narrow group. He framed the practical test as learning to work better, serve customers faster and use AI to discover innovation. Koen highlighted the Amazon Skills Centre and the need to build digital and AI capability among young people. Speakers described AI as an extraordinary advisory service—not a substitute for human responsibility—and called for basic literacy, tools that solve small-business problems, trustworthy systems, cloud security and a reliable market for AI-enabled enterprise. Regulation, including a possible global framework, was presented as necessary to stop AI becoming a “super beast”. The deep dive into AI and workforce talked about AI that is inclusive, locally relevant and with African priorities. One speaker compared how combustion engine changed mobility for ever to how AI will change the way we live and do business for ever. AI will surely make work faster, productive and lower the expenses in African context remarkably, and will lead to some sort of a democratization of workflow. Consider AI as an incredible advisory service but whether to take the advice, to what extent and with what changes, still remains a human decision. The South African Amazon head spoke about the Amazon Skills Centre and its role in upgrading digital-AI skills of the youths here.  A thought leadership talk by the South African Microsoft head later focused on the use of AI to answer these questions: how can I learn to do my work better, how do I serve my customers faster, and how can AI help in shifting outcomes and discovering innovation. A session also focused on the need of basic knowledge and the ability for value production through AI, creating reliable market for small businesses through AI, getting access to using AI tools to solve business problems, and the need of trust factor behind the tools we use, along with cloud security which is a must factor for using AI in business. A speaker did also speak about why government regulation or a global regulatory regime is needed to prevent AI from becoming a super beast.  The women-in-business panel, moderated by Carmen Rudd, featured Edna Sathekga-Montse of African Bank, Janice Johnston of Edge Growth Venture, Fadilah Tchoumba of the African Business Angel Network, Khangi Khoza of Swissport and Sana Afouaiz of Womenpreneur Initiative. It examined barriers that remain stark in parts of Africa: women can still be prevented by law from owning land, limiting assets and access to credit. “Empowerment is the incremental release of control,” Sathekga-Montse said. Speakers urged larger companies to feed, not swallow, smaller enterprises; integrate sustainability and technology; discuss money with girls from childhood; and treat failure and asking for help as part of entrepreneurship. One speaker recalled Nelson Mandela: “It always seems impossible till the work is done.” Ms Edna of African Bank very rightly noted, “Empowerment is the incremental release of control, and is very true in the case of women.” She emphasized on how the business of tomorrow will reward the integration of sustainability and technology for long term and fast growth. One speaker quoted Nelson Mandela, “It always seems impossible till the work is done,” in the context of women led enterprises. “Talking about money is important for women entrepreneurs from the childhood,” said a lady entrepreneur. “Celebrate failure as much as success, and support those who have had occasional failures, and asking for help is natural and human,” Edna noted.  Minister Stella Tembisa Ndabeni, South Africa’s Minister of Small Business Development, set out a progression from idea to enterprise, market, investment and scale. She argued that ecosystem capital and digital capacity must move home-grown and informal businesses from local to national, African and global markets. She also addressed gender-based violence, warning: “We cannot speak about building prosperous economies while women are afraid in their homes and communities,”. Economic freedom, she said, is incomplete without safety. The programme also included a digital-economy fireside with Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, Group Executive Director of Naspers and Prosus; a fintech panel; research and policy discussions; and regional pitching by 15 finalists. GEN founder and president Jonathan Ortmans placed the day in a wider frame: entrepreneurship is entering an era of democratisation, as expensive technologies give way to accessible tools and alternative finance, while green and nature-based businesses gain importance. A closing GEN leadership session reviewed the congress’s African gains and looked ahead to the Global Congress in Doha in March 2027. YEFI was represented by its founder, Mathew Mattam, and board member Prof Ujjwal K. Chowdhury. Their participation reflected the event’s central proposition: Africa’s entrepreneurial future will be built through connections that convert skills, ideas and inclusion into investment, jobs and cross-border growth. ...Read more

17 Sep 2026

17 September 2026, Cape Town GEC+Africa 2026 brings Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem together in Cape Town, connecting startups, investors, policymakers and support networks around a shared vision of inclusive, innovation-led growth. SummaryGEC+Africa 2026 in Cape Town brought together entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and ecosystem-support organisations from across Africa to strengthen continental connections. The congress focused on turning a fragmented entrepreneurial landscape into a more connected system for capital, knowledge, markets and opportunities. A key development was the launch of KUMii, an AI-powered platform designed to connect businesses with investors, mentors, policymakers and other ecosystem partners. Discussions also highlighted gaps in investment, skills and support for MSMEs, while exploring the role of AI, creative industries, renewable energy and digital innovation in Africa’s growth. The congress placed particular emphasis on inclusive access to finance and the need to strengthen sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and education. Its longer-term impact will depend on whether the conversations and partnerships formed in Cape Town translate into practical pathways that help African businesses scale. Cape Town became a meeting point for Africa’s economic imagination as the Global Entrepreneurship Congress Africa (GEC+Africa) 2026 opened at the Cape Town International Convention Centre under the theme “Connecting Africa”. Hosted by the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) Africa and 22 On Sloane, the 16–17 September congress brings together approximately 2,000 delegates, including more than 1,500 startups and MSMEs, 150 investors, 150 policymakers and 200 ecosystem-support organisations from over 43 African countries. Yet its importance lies not in its scale alone. GEC+Africa is an attempt to turn a fragmented entrepreneurial landscape into a connected continental growth system.  A striking feature of any African get-together from various African nations has a striking pan-African spirit and expression. Global Entrepreneurship Network organized GEC+ for Africa in the Cape Town International Convention Centre in South Africa is no different. Hence it starts with South African anthem and the anthem of the Organization of African Unity. African solidarity song, dance, expression are resplendent in the inaugural session.  The opening carried a distinctly pan-African spirit: local music and dance, the language of solidarity and the insistence that Africa’s future cannot be built through isolated national efforts. Kizito Okechukwu, Co-Chair of GEN Africa and Executive Head of 22 On Sloane, set the direction, while GEN Founder and President Jonathan Ortmans placed African entrepreneurship within a global network of opportunity. Edna Sathekga-Montse, Group Executive for Transformation and Sustainability at African Bank, underlined the financial sector’s responsibility to widen access to capital and support inclusive growth. The GEN Global President Jonathan Ortmans went down the memory lane recollecting the GEC journey in Africa and the remarkable response it has got in the continent in general, and South Africa in particular.  Former South African President Kgalema Motlanthe gave the congress its moral and political centre. Access to finance for African businesses, he argued, must be treated as a right rather than a privilege. Africa’s next transformation, he suggested, will be driven by innovation in the digital, green and social sectors, but only if countries strengthen agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and education and give practical force to the African Continental Free Trade Area. His message was unmistakable: Ubuntu must become an economic practice of sharing knowledge, markets and resources. The most concrete expression of that idea was the launch of KUMii by 22 On Sloane. An AI-powered ecosystem platform, KUMii is designed to connect entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, mentors, professional service providers and ecosystem partners in one digital environment. Led by KUMii CEO Noma Ngubane, with Zinhle Kubheka and other ecosystem specialists, it seeks to connect businesses to capital, markets, knowledge, expertise, tools and opportunities. Its ambition is not to create another isolated portal, but to reduce the friction that leaves valuable programmes scattered, founders invisible and support providers working in silos. KUMii could become the connective tissue of Africa’s MSME economy.  The congress also confronted the investment gap. Sessions involving Priyansh Dhawan, Amina El Zayat of the International Finance Corporation, Nkosikhona Mbatha of SEDFA, Maxwell Gomera of UNDP and Oluwatoyin Ahmed Edu of Nigeria’s Bank of Industry examined how angel finance, venture capital, blended finance and stronger local funds can move enterprises beyond pilots. At the same time, Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa of Naspers & Prosus and Emmanuel Lubanzadio, Africa Lead at OpenAI, explored how AI, data and skills can drive industrialisation rather than deepen exclusion. GEC+Africa’s vision is broad enough to include creative industries, renewable energy, township ventures, fintech, healthcare, food systems and cross-border trade. The “Made in Africa” conversation, featuring leaders such as Sylvester Chauke, Eyram Tawia and Zama Phakathi, affirmed that culture and storytelling are also engines of jobs, identity and global competitiveness. The Road to GEC+Africa pitch competitions, culminating in a continental showcase of 15 finalists, gave that vision an entrepreneurial face. Various sessions highlighted the role of venture capital in African MSME businesses, and noted that the angel investment ecosystem of the continent, which is just 20% of that of India, needs a major push forward before VC funding comes into play.  A session on the creative industries highlighted recent achievements of the sector noting that by 2030 the sector is expected to cross USD 200 billion in gross turnover. It did also note that AI is a cautious enabling factor in creativity in the continent, and a formal structured learning in this sector was still missing by and large in most African nations. The content creating and selling eco-system is still in its infancy and needs capital infusion, along with procedural, technological and policy-wise major push ahead.  The congress therefore matters beyond two days in Cape Town. Its real test will be whether conversations become partnerships, partnerships become pathways and pathways help ordinary African businesses scale. GEC+Africa has named the challenge. With KUMii, it has begun building the infrastructure to answer it. The YouthAid Entrepreneurs’ Federation of India is being represented here by the founder Mathew Mattam and Board Member Prof Ujjwal K Chowdhury (also the editor-in-chief of SustainVerse.org).  ...Read more