Meera Subramanian
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person place thing

July 2, 2022 By meerasub Leave a Comment

Randy Cohen likes to learn about people slant. Instead of asking them about what they do, etc., etc., he asks them about a person, a place, and a thing that are meaningful to them. It was a pleasure to talk with him about girls in India, maps of Texas, and falcons over Cape Cod. Person Place Thing from Northeast Public Radio’s WAMC was produced with Orion magazine. Have a listen here.

Filed Under: audio, climate change, elemental india, events, journalism, Orion

more on Chennai’s water crisis

August 2, 2019 By meerasub Leave a Comment

The summer Southwest monsoon has brought some rain and momentary relief to Chennai, but the question of how to mitigate water shortages (and excesses) are not gone. After my New York Times op-ed last month, I’ve had a chance to speak about water with others interested in the story. These issues are not disappearing anytime soon. From the World Resources Institute:

New data from WRI’s Aqueduct tools reveal that 17 countries – home to one-quarter of the world’s population—face “extremely high” levels of baseline water stress, where irrigated agriculture, industries and municipalities withdraw more than 80% of their available supply on average every year.

I spoke to Mark Goldberg on the Global Dispatches Podcast. In essence, do all the small stuff first: restore wetlands, enforce rainwater catchment mandates, educate on conservation, fix leaky pipes, capture water across the landscape with small-scale systems that work with nature, and not against it. Can India develop a new 21st-century model of sustainable development? The opportunity is still there, though hard to see evidence of embracing such possibility. Listen to the podcast here:

On the BBC’s podcast Beyond Today, I spoke with host Matthew Price about the crisis. BBC’s Rajini Vaidyanathan also reported from Chennai directly. Have a listen here.

I also make a cameo appearance in this Al Jazeera The Stream news piece, featuring Veena Srinivasan, a senior fellow with Ashoka Trust, Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, a data manager with World Resources Institute India, and T.M. Krishna, a musician, artist, and activist. Watch the episode here:

And then sit back and watch/listen to T.M. Krishna’s haunting song Poromboke:

Filed Under: A River Runs Again, audio, climate change, drought, elemental india, journalism Tagged With: Chennai, climate change, india, interview, podcast, water

Chennai’s Water Crisis

July 15, 2019 By meerasub Leave a Comment

Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

 

While researching and reporting A River Runs Again (aka Elemental India), I explored small-scale, across-the-landscape solutions for water crises in India. Even just a few years later, the world is warmer and there are more people in need of water. When the major South Indian city of Chennai, where my father is from and where many in my extended family live, ran out of piped water during its current drought, I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times about how India might consider a new approach to development that might embrace the methods I wrote about in the book. Here’s how it begins:

India’s water crisis offers a striking reminder of how climate change is rapidly morphing into a climate emergency. Piped water has run dry in Chennai, the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and 21 other Indian cities are also facing the specter of “Day Zero,” when municipal water sources are unable to meet demand.

Chennai, a city of eight million on the Bay of Bengal, depends on the fall monsoon to provide half of the city’s annual rainfall. Last year, the city had 55 percent less rainfall than normal. When the monsoon ended early, in December, the skies dried up and stayed that way. Chennai went without rain for 200 days. As winter passed into spring and the temperature rose to 108 degrees Fahrenheit, its four water reservoirs turned into puddles of cracked mud.

Some parts of the city have been without piped water for five months now. Weary women with brightly colored plastic jugs now await water tankers, sometimes in the middle of the night. On June 20, the delayed summer monsoon arrived as a disappointing light shower.

These water crises are now global and perennial….

Read the rest of “India’s Terrifying Water Crisis” here at The New York Times.

Filed Under: A River Runs Again, climate change, drought, elemental india, journalism, News Tagged With: Chennai, climate change, dams, development, drought, india

Will Modi Colonize his Country or Enact EcoSwaraj?

March 20, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

NEW DELHI/INDIA, 16NOV08 -Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, India, speaks during the welcome lunch at the World Economic Forum's India Economic Summit 2008 in New Delhi, 16-18 November 2008. Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org)/Photo by Norbert Schiller

Photo by Norbert Schiller via Wikimedia Commons

I am a half-daughter of India. I have watched the South Asian nation develop since I first visited Madras as a young girl, my Indian father bringing his fair-skinned American wife and my brother and me from America on multiple trips to visit dozens of relatives along the shores of the Bay of Bengal.

In the forty years since that first visit, the country has undergone a whole-scale transformation. Never have there been so many humans with so much elemental need for healthy food, clean water, and dependable energy systems. How will India bring these basics to her citizenry?

In recent years, I have visited as an environmental journalist and Fulbright scholar to seek out the answer to this question, investigating the state of India’s natural world and exploring how the elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether – are faring. I found a subcontinent in crisis, but I also found individuals and organisations reinventing their landscapes and lives.

Whether they will receive support from the government remains to be seen.

Read the rest at TheDailyO.

Filed Under: A River Runs Again, elemental india, journalism Tagged With: A River Runs Again, Elemental India, india, journalism, opinion

Elemental India tour continuing south…

February 9, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

 

2016.01.31-27

More events coming up for Elemental India. Specific details here. Hope to see you and do share the word with others you know in the following cities:

Pune:
• 11 Feb: Fergusson College
Chennai:
• 15 Feb: MIDS
• 16 Feb: IIT-M Research Park
Bengaluru:
• 19 Feb: Azim Premji University
• 19 Feb: IISc Centre for Ecological Sciences
Hyderabad:
• 26 Feb: University of Hyderabad

Filed Under: A River Runs Again, elemental india Tagged With: A River Runs Again, book tour, Elemental India, events, india, pollution environment

Mumbai events

February 1, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

2016.01.31-271
I’m in Mumbai this week speaking about Elemental India, as the air is thick with the residue of the Deonar dump fire, as we think about solutions.  Here are a few events:
 
  • Green Drinks at Bombay Connect Thurs. Feb. 4 at 7:30 pm
  • Mumbai Press Club Fri. Feb. 5 at 4:00 pm (journalists only)
  • Kala Ghoda Arts Festival Eco-Arts panel Sat. Feb. 6 at 6:45 pm, where I’m excited to explore the power of the arts in enacting ecological change. With Ravi Agarwal, Sonia Mehra Chawla and Arati Kumar-Rao.
See here for specific details, as well as information on other book events happening around India. 

Filed Under: elemental india, readings Tagged With: book tour, Elemental India, events, Mumbai, readings

UChicago Center/EPIC presentation: New Delhi

January 21, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

Epic
I’ll be giving a full multimedia presentation about Elemental India at The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago- India (EPIC India), an interdisciplinary research group at U.Chicago on energy and environmental policy and economics. Join us!
Thursday, January 28, 2016
6:00 PM
UChicago Center
DLF Capitol Point
Baba Kharak Singh Marg
New Delhi
RSVP here.

Related show

  • Author: Meera Subramanian
  • Tour: A River Runs Again / Elemental India Book Tour
  • Date: January 28, 2016
  • Time: 6:00pm
  • Venue: UChicago Center in Delhi
  • City: New Delhi
  • Address: DLF Capitol Point, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Connaught Place
  • Country: India
  • Notes: Elemental India: The Natural World at a Time of Crisis and Opportunity. Multimedia presentation

Filed Under: A River Runs Again, elemental india, readings Tagged With: A River Runs Again, book tour, Elemental India, energy, events, india, readings

We Speak Up: Delhi event

January 20, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

Feminism Beyond Boundaries 25Jan (1)“We Speak Up: Can a Generation of Indian Girls Find their Voice?” 

Another Delhi event coming up on Monday, when I’ll be speaking at Apne Aap‘s Feminism Beyond Boundaries series. I’ll be focusing on the fifth element in my book, in which I traveled to Bihar to explore population growth along with reproductive and sexual health training for teens. One girl transformed her life when she slipped a note into her father’s pocket….

Join me Monday, January 25, 2016 at the Oxford Bookstore Connaught Place (81, N Block, Connaught Place), 4:00 pm, to hear more.

Check out the Facebook event page here.

Related show

  • Author: Meera Subramanian
  • Tour: A River Runs Again / Elemental India Book Tour
  • Date: January 25, 2016
  • Time: 4:00pm
  • Venue: Oxford Bookstore
  • City: New Delhi
  • Address: N-81, Connaught Circus
  • Country: India
  • Notes: “We Speak Up: Can a Generation of Indian Girls Find their Voice?”

Filed Under: A River Runs Again, elemental india, readings Tagged With: book tour, Elemental India, energy, events, feminism, india, readings

The Dogs: an excerpt

January 20, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

IMG_7716

Bikaner carcass dump, Rajasthan. Photo by Meera Subramanian.

An excerpt from Elemental India / A River Runs Again, featured in The Caravan.

The vultures are gone, but the livestock carcasses they once consumed by the millions remain. Many are collected and deposited at carcass dumps like the one called Jorbeer on the outskirts of Bikaner, where dogs run wild amid an endless supply of food.

As I travelled around India, I kept hearing about aggressive dogs. Soon after I arrived in Bikaner, someone told me about two local girls, eight or nine years old, who were attacked by dogs at night, while they were sleeping. They were such easy prey. “They were hurt so badly, but not killed,” the man told me.

“The police came and took the dogs away, but I was so astonished…how can there be dogs like this?”

Read the rest at The Caravan. 

Filed Under: A River Runs Again, elemental india Tagged With: A River Runs Again, book tour, Elemental India, india, vulture

India Book Launch: New Delhi!

January 18, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

ElementalIndiaLaunchINVITE

Join me, Delhiites! I’ve landed in India for the release of Elemental India: The Natural World in a Time of Crisis and Opportunity, and hope you’ll join me at one of the upcoming events. This is the official book launch, Tuesday, January 19th (tomorrow!) at The American Center at 6:00 pm. I’ll be in conversation with the wonderful Aseem Shrivastava, co-author of Churning the Earth.We’ll be touching upon faith in a seed, vanishing vultures, rivers reborn, choking air, population pressures, and the eternal question of hope. And there’ll be refreshments. Co-hosted by The American Center, HarperCollins India, USIEF (Fulbright) and Caravan magazine. Do come! Details here.

Update: Here’s a podcast of our conversation:

More events in the works for Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai over the next month. Find all details for confirmed events here.

Filed Under: A River Runs Again, elemental india, Fulbright Tagged With: book tour, Elemental India, events, Fulbright, india, readings

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