Whenever filmmakers want to portray the raw, uncomplicated beauty of India, two shots often make it to the screen. A crowded city bazaar, with two-wheelers and colourful autorickshaws jostling for space, women wearing vibrant sarees in blue, green, yellow and orange, and children smiling toothily into the camera while waving paper fans. The second shot is deeper and more evocative, of a fisherman standing on the hull of his boat at dawn, tossing his net in slow motion as the sun’s...

India’s solar manufacturing story is entering a new phase. After a decade of relying heavily on imported equipment, the country has spent the past few years trying to build its own solar manufacturing ecosystem through policies such as the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme and the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM). The strategy has transformed India into one of the world’s fastest-growing solar module manufacturers, with domestic capacity rising to around 193 GW. But a crit...

India’s climate startup ecosystem has no shortage of incubators, investors and accelerators. So why did a group of founders decide to create yet another network? The answer, says The Sustainability Mafia co-founder Ganesh Shankar, was that founders were still building largely in isolation.

In Bengaluru, String Bio is converting one of the world's most potent greenhouse gases into usable products such as food, feed, and sustainable materials.

Every Indian home has a dusty drawer that is a graveyard for defunct electronic gadgets – a tangle of chargers and cables, outdated phones, a forgotten router, and maybe even a relic like a BlackBerry. Multiply that drawer by a billion; that’s us Indians upgrading our devices every few years, and you get one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world – e-waste.

Every tourist season brings an outcry to ban plastic. First, TV and phone screens fill with scenery that makes city-dwellers sigh – a meadow in Himachal, riotous with wildflowers, or a lake so still it mirrors the sky. Then the camera pans, and there they are – chip packets gleaming in the sun, juice cartons flattened underfoot, and plastic chai cups scattered across the grass.
India has responded by banning single-use plastic time and again. The country rolled out a nationwide ban on certain s...

Art fairs, the very events designed to uplift our spirits, are also one of the biggest carbon offenders in the art world.