(This column first appeared in The Print on March 23, 2022)
- In Odisha, a tribal girl mourns the loss of her ancestral forests — and her people’s livelihood. Once lush forests have now been reduced to barren scrubland. A few hours away, on the coast, a young man surveys the destruction left by a cyclone, the waves coming closer, threatening to swallow his village. In rural Uttar Pradesh, a teenage girl despairs that her community doesn’t know the very air they breathe — polluted by industry and dirty cooking fuels — is shortening their lives…