Category Archives: Reportage

Thirty years after the Bhopal Gas Tragedy

[First published in The Hindu dated Nov. 2, 2014] Come December, it will be 30 years since the Bhopal gas tragedy occurred. The leakage of the deadly methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) factory in Bhopal went down in history as one of the worst industrial disasters in the world. But afterContinue reading “Thirty years after the Bhopal Gas Tragedy”

Have we lost it?

[First published in The Hindu dated July 29, 2016] The Ballroom of Chennai’s Taj Coromandel hotel, resplendent under the amber glow of 20-something chandeliers, seemed like an unlikely setting for a discussion on climate change. After all, the brightly-lit room was, if anything, a painful reminder of our conspicuous consumption of electricity, and everything elseContinue reading “Have we lost it?”

In Jayapura, the village Modi adopted

[First published in The Hindu dated May 31, 2015] Jitu Banbasi is a happy man today. A member of the Scheduled Tribe Musahar community, from Jayapura village in the Varanasi district of Uttar Pradesh, he lived in a makeshift brick house earlier but is now entitled to a pucca house painted in bright yellow and cobalt blueContinue reading “In Jayapura, the village Modi adopted”

The nightmare that ‘Black July’ conjures up

[First published in The Hindu dated July 30, 2014] Though it is five years since the civil war ended in Sri Lanka, 69,000 Tamils continue to live as refugees. The date was 25 July 1983. Antony* reached Luckyland biscuit factory at Kundasale, a suburb in Kandy, his place of work for 10 years, in theContinue reading “The nightmare that ‘Black July’ conjures up”

The ‘good’ elephant and the ‘bad’ elephant

[First published in The Hindu thREAD on Jan. 22, 2016] Here’s the tragic part about being born as an elephant. Sure, you may get to eat a whole lot of food and grow into a 3,000-kilo giant, but if your fate is to be ordered about by a puny human, how are you supposed toContinue reading “The ‘good’ elephant and the ‘bad’ elephant”