Monika Mondal

In a splendid blend of art and science, Monika Mondal pulls together sound, perspectives, and quantitative data to explain how changing monsoon patterns and economic pressures are shaping agriculture in Muzaffarnagar, known for its sugar farms and mills in the sugar bowl of India, Uttar Pradesh.

It was about a year and a half ago that 30-year-old Nayimuddin Ansari last looked at his three children without any problem in his vision. On a sunny afternoon in March last year, while Ansari was going home, something got into his eyes. He stopped on the side of the highway, next to the Triveni sugar mill—the largest in Asia—in the Uttar Pradesh town of Khatauli. He rubbed his eyes to try to get rid of the irritant. A few days later, he had pain, and then an infection, in his eyes. “The loca...

NEW DELHI — Samosas and jalebis are typical Indian snacks, but for residents of a slum in the southeastern region of Delhi, they are also useful terms for getting around the neighborhood.
“Samosa Chowk and Jalebi Chowk are important landmarks of my colony,” said Meera, 50, who does not have a legal last name. “And the Shani bazaar [Saturday market] is a no miss. But you have to be alert as it gets dark.” Markers like these, in lieu of typical directions, are how Meera gets around her neighbor...

Monkeys and humans are fighting for space in Indian cities. Right now, it doesn’t look like a winnable war.
On a summer evening in the mid-1980s, the primatologist Iqbal Malik got a phone call from Tughlakabad village in Southeast Delhi. “Madam ji, come soon,” a desperate voice at the other end said. “They’re taking them away from the site.”

Rao Gulab Singh Lodhi, a farmer from Madhya Pradesh, a semi-arid region in central India, cultivated a variety of chickpeas in a small portion of his land in the 2019-2020 season.
Climate breakdown will stress essential food crops. Scientists and farmers in India are working together to find a solution for chickpeas.

On a cold morning in the early winter of 2019, farmer Shekhar Chauhan reached his small sugarcane farm to start a regular work day, only to find it flooded. The boundary of a nearby drain had broken and water spilled into the farms in the Muzaffarnagar district of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. A significant amount of Chauhan’s crops was lost.

Chauhan complained to the management of one of the eight sugar mills in the district. He said the mill was releasing water in the narrow d...

India has always had a weak healthcare system, especially given its mammoth population, but the country has somehow managed. The COVID-19 pandemic has completely upended that tenuous balance.

The ‘father of hybrid rice’ took China from famine to feast with his 1970s breakthrough that boosted yields by 20 to 30 per cent, yet today much of Asia remains wedded to local forms of inbred rice

Mamunur Rahman never really questioned why his sisters had not completed their education. In 2007, he was doing a masters degree in the UK, far from his home in Bangladesh, when a lecture on gender and development struck him.

The inability to perform shifting agriculture and live close to the canopy of the forest has affected the Soligas' livelihoods, their kitchens, as well as the forest itself.

Dr Made Gowda is a senior research associate at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. The 48-year-old lets out a laugh when recounting his past; he failed classes and dropped out several times before earning a PhD.

Path to co-existence with floodplain restoration is fraught with peril as India’s small farmers battle for their survival.

Hemanti Dhara Das was severely underweight and anaemic at the time of her pregnancy. Her weight had dropped to 32kg and her haemoglobin level had dipped to 6 gm/dl. While she managed to deliver her baby, she died three months later because of complications arising out of childbirth.

It’s now been over a 100 days since farmers across India began protesting the three farm laws. Despite 11 rounds of talks, the government and farmers’ unions are still at a stalemate, with the latter holding onto their demand that the laws be repealed entirely or Minimum Support Price (MSP) be brought in for all crops. While farmers are now fretting over the new legislation, their occupation has been fraught with tension over generations. They have always been exposed to exploitation due to rampant corruption at mandis and by middlemen.