“The world is a living tapestry … As the weave of life is torn apart in one place, the threads unravel in another,” says author and physics professor Vandana Singh, acknowledging humanity’s interconnectedness with the planet — and the uncertain future we face if we don’t protect it. Reading an excerpt from her latest work of speculative fiction, Singh shares a hopeful vision for Earth’s renewal. | Learn more: Positive climate futures: A conversation with Vandana Singh >>
Tribal languages are a treasure trove of knowledge about a region’s flora, fauna and medicinal plants
“Tribal languages are a treasure trove of knowledge about a region’s flora, fauna and medicinal plants. Usually, this information is passed from generation to generation. However, when a language declines, that knowledge system is completely gone.” – Ayesha Kidwai (Centre for Linguistics, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) quoted by Abhijit Mohanty in “Seven decades after independence, many tribal languages in India face extinction threat” | Learn more about the work done by the People’s Linguistic Survey of India and endangered languages worldwide >>
“India’s geographic location at the confluence of three major biogeographic zones – i.e. the Indo-Malayan, the Eurasian and the Afro-Tropical – makes it extremely biodiverse in its genes, species and ecosystems. It is one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries (Mittermeier et al. 1997). India can boast of over 8.1% of the world’s biodiversity supported on 2.4% of the earth’s surface. An estimated 47,000 identified plant species represent 11% of the world’s flora.” | Learn more: eBook | Disseminating environment related information to improve peoples’ livelihoods >>
“The notion of ‘mainstreaming’ needs to be challenged not just because Adivasi culture is being crushed, but also because Adivasi values and ways of life offer insights that the ‘mainstream’ needs. If we are to halt the destruction of ecosystems, we need to understand how closely biodiversity and cultural diversity are intertwined. Perhaps it is time to reverse the gaze and begin to learn afresh from Adivasis.” – Felix Padel & Malvika Gupta (The Hindu) | Learn more about the role of tribal communities in fostering biodiversity, ethnobotany and cultural diversity | Success stories | Tribal identity >>
“I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and … toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.” – George Orwell | Learn more: Childhood | Customs | Games and leisure time | Literature – fiction | Storytelling >>
Adivasi communities: stewards of India’s cultural heritage and biodiversity
[…] India’s tribal communities — over 104.5 million people, or 8.6 per cent of the population — remain among the most marginalised despite decades of welfare schemes and development promises. In states such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Rajasthan and Odisha, tribal districts consistently record higher poverty levels than non-tribal areas, even as these regions supply land, forests and minerals for the country’s growth. These communities have often been compelled to relinquish their lands for large-scale infrastructure projects, resulting in the erosion of their identity, livelihoods, and future prospects.
It is crucial to recognise the value these communities bring, particularly their eco-friendly lifestyles, which offer important insights into addressing climate-related challenges. For instance, during the 2018 drought in Sundergarh, Odisha, a visit to a remote tribal village revealed thriving vegetation and effective water-harvesting systems. Kiri village in Lahunipara block of Sundergarh district, inhabited by the Paudi Bhuyan community — a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) — has demonstrated remarkable resilience.
This observation underscores the importance of learning from traditional ecological knowledge, especially sustainable farming practices that rely on drought-resistant and indigenous seeds.
Adivasi communities, as stewards of India’s cultural heritage and biodiversity, must be central to the nation’s development narrative. Their lives are intricately linked to land, forests and water, yet they face growing threats from climate change, livelihood insecurity and displacement. Addressing these challenges requires more than welfare initiatives; it demands robust enforcement of constitutional rights, substantial public investment and the strengthening of Gram Sabha–based governance. […]
Source: “Union Budget must shift from welfare to rights-based public investment for Adivasi communities” by Debabrat Patra, Sion Kongari & Saurabh Kumar, Down to Earth, 9 February 2026
URL: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/governance/union-budget-must-shift-from-welfare-to-rights-based-public-investment-for-adivasi-communities
Date Visited: 30 June 2026
Tech billionaires are on a mission to make the stories of science fiction a reality: space colonization, human/machine bio organisms, and living forever in a state of unhindered bliss. To most of us, this version of a far future utopia comes off as “billionaire boys and their toys” but critics say such a dismissive attitude is naïve.
Why all of us are bound to benefit from lessons provided by Adivasi, indigenous and other (marginalized) communities: Vandana Singh (professor of physics and environment)
Excerpts | Tip for a full transcript download this and related episodes on CBC’s podcast >>
41:34 Vandana Singh on alternatives, often by marginalized communities
“So for example, probably the most well-known example for me is the Vikalp Sangam Project in India, which has collected the stories of hundreds of grassroots movements and experiments and alternatives, often by marginalized communities. And not just that, but connected them to each other. So that, for instance, the Adivasis, the indigenous peoples of one region, who have been very successful in regenerating their ecosystems and getting back in touch with some key aspects of their culture, have actually traveled to another place in India, to where they are pastoralists, for instance, camel herders, and helped them and advised them as to how to resist the kinds of pressures that are being put on them.
So that’s one small example of the kind of networking that I’m talking about. So here are people who have figured out through a combination of taking their own wisdom, their traditional knowledge, as well as insights from modernity, and resurrected the systems that sustain them, because these are ecosystem people, these are people who depend on their ecosystem for survival and regenerated those ecosystems. And at the same time, they have also resisted.” […]
46:31 Vandana Singh on deforestation
“Now, we don’t know as yet the causes of the COVID outbreak, but it is the case that, and research indicates this, that many of the new zoonotic diseases are connected with deforestation and with the destruction of natural resources. And even in the COVID year, deforestation did not significantly decrease. In fact, it increased.
So that is why the system is the problem. A system that is so separate from nature that it can only see nature as something to devour. And the thing is that we are nature.
So you devour nature, you destroy us. And it is just such an insane perspective. It’s not how we’re going to survive.
And it’s this small group of very powerful people and their systems that are holding the planet hostage for their, you know, fevered dreams of, that are really based on fear.” […]
Listen online to the full episode: Jan. 22, 2025: Techno-Utopia or The Billionaires’ Wet Dream >>
Source: “Techno-Utopia or The Billionaires’ Wet Dream”, CBC Ideas, 22 Jan 2025
Transcript: https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/ideas/id151485663?i=1000685069416&r=2494
Date accessed: 25 January 2025
Video | Vandana Singh’s TED talk “A sci-fi story of Earth’s renewal”
An author of speculative fiction, professor of physics and interdisciplinary researcher, Vandana Singh is one of the four inaugural Climate Imagination Fellows.
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Internet access and online education in India’s rural areas
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed how rooted structural imbalances are between rural and urban, male and female, rich and poor, even in the digital world. | Read the full report in Scroll.in >>
[…] While 66% of India’s population lives in villages, only a little over 15% of rural households have access to internet services. For urban households, the proportion is 42%.
In fact, only 8% of all households with members aged between five and 24 have both a computer and an internet connection. It is also useful to note that as per the National Sample Survey definition, a household with a device or internet facility does not necessarily imply that the connection and devices are owned by the household. […]
In states like Delhi, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Uttarakhand, more than 40% households have access to internet. The proportion is less than 20% for Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. The gender divide in internet usage is also stark. […]
Source: “Indian education can’t go online – only 8% of homes with young members have computer with net link” by Protiva Kundu, Scroll.in (5 May 2020)
URL: https://scroll.in/article/960939/indian-education-cant-go-online-only-8-of-homes-with-school-children-have-computer-with-net-link
Date visited: 23 June 2020
Nissim Mannathukkaren on the need for recognising the dispossession of India’s tribals
[…] The sculpture of Madhu points to the fundamental but hidden truth of Indian modernity and development: that it is built on an unprecedented dispossession of, and violence against, the nation’s Adivasi communities.
Sadly, this feature equally marks Kerala, the State with the highest human development indicators (with Adivasis making up 1.1% of the population), and ‘backward’ States like Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand which have substantial tribal populations. Thus, Madhu is not, unfortunately, alone. The Madhus of the world suffer violent deaths not because we failed to modernise them, but because of the intrinsic connections between their terrible fate and well-being — in 70 years after Independence, post-colonial governments have virtually replicated colonial government policies towards the Adivasis.
Various estimates put the number of development-induced internally displaced people in India over 50 years between 20 and 50 million. Of this, tribals, who are only 8.6% of the population, probably make up more than half the number. They are the sacrificial lambs that the dominant majority society offers at the altar of development. Dispossessed, they become a part of the army of cheap, daily wage labour. […]
Behind the (justifiably) much-lauded secular model of development in Kerala lies the hideous reality of racism/casteism in which an Adivasi or a Dalit becomes the other. Adivasis are a constant butt of jokes in commercial cultural productions like the 2002 low-brow Malayalam comedy film, Bamboo Boys.
Again, this is something that has national resonance. Adivasis are not full persons, but mere exotic props in mainstream films. The contact with mainstream society is absolutely damaging for the cultural self of the Adivasis. Their children are often traumatised because of persistent discrimination in schools. […]
Crimes against Scheduled Tribes in Kerala increased substantially between 2014 and 2016.
There cannot be a mere developmental/economistic solution to the Adivasi ‘problem’. But that has been the dominant approach to mitigating their condition. Nearly ₹5,000 crore has been allocated in the Kerala State Budgets alone (excluding Central government and other project funds) in the last 10 years but with hardly any demonstrable results.
Adivasis cannot be equal citizens until they are considered holistically as a part of cultural and ecospheres with unique customs and practices, and not just as welfare recipients receiving doles. Further, there cannot be the liberation of the Adivasi until the fundamental material issue of land alienation is addressed. But that is precisely what is being hidden. […]
Nissim Mannathukkaren is Chair, International Development Studies, Dalhousie University, Canada
Source: “The Adivasi in the mirror: The lynching of Madhu in Kerala must shock our conscience into recognising the dispossession of India’s tribals” by Nissim Mannathukkaren (The Hindu, 3 March 2018)
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-adivasi-in-the-mirror/article22911351.ece
Accessed: 9 March 2021