GENRE: In Focus

Health workers at a Boston hospital broke into a celebratory dance on receiving their first doses of COVID-19 vaccine recently. In India, even before the vials are ready, competition is emerging over who will have the first access. With the vaccine in the final trial phase, India faces the looming challenge of producing the quantities necessary to provide immunity to all its citizens.  Globally, pharma companies are racing ahead to roll out vaccines to fight COVID-19, including the new highly infectious strain that has been found in Britain. Daily life cannot find a new normal until populations have built up antibodies…

All through the lockdown imposed to avert the spread of COVID-19, Chennai was without public transport and even now, services have just begun to operate in a limited manner. While there have been signs of a cycling revival, there are also reports of an increase in the sales of personal motor vehicles. But, as colleges and offices begin to reopen, it raises various questions about what commute in the city will be like in the coming year. Even before the pandemic, and in fact, for several years now, there has been a call to rethink how transportation works in Chennai.…

Renee McPereira is a worried young girl. Her pre-board exams ahead of the 12th standard Central Board of Secondary Examinations (CBSE) exams should normally have been over by now. But now they are slated to begin on January 16th. The school final exams would normally have begun in March 2021. But as the countdown to an unknown date begins, Renee does not know when they will be held and counts herself lucky that she is in the Arts group and does not have to worry about practicals. Vaccine or no vaccine, “it is unlikely to be a happy new year for students, parents, teachers—all…

Climate change is leading to a rise in extreme events the world over, and developing countries such as India have been experiencing not only higher death rates but also greater economic impacts due to natural hazards. Urban areas in India have been found to be particularly vulnerable to floods due to unplanned developmental activities, change in land use patterns, overcrowding as well as increase in natural hazards such as rise in sea levels, storms and cyclones. This paper 'Investigation of role of retention storage in tanks (small water bodies) on future urban flooding: A case study of Chennai city, India'…

What do the trees, water bodies, agricultural fields and forests mean for a city like Delhi? Can we ascribe a monetary value to their contribution? These are some of the questions that a team of Delhi-based scientists recently tried to answer and found that rapid and unplanned urbanisation in Delhi during the last two decades (1998-2018) has happened at the expense of many natural and semi-natural elements and it has resulted in a loss of about Rs. 560 million (US$ 7.614 million). The study showed that the biggest contributor to this loss was the decline in the city’s forest cover, which declined…

This article is part of our special series Environmental Sustainability & Climate Change in Tier II cities supported by Climate Trends. Situated on the banks of river Ganga, Varanasi, India’s holiest city and the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, came into limelight in 2015, when Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) data highlighted that the city didn’t have even a single good air quality day that year. In fact, Varanasi is among the 43 critically polluted zones across the country. Not just air, its water quality is equally pathetic. Pollution indices in Varanasi have only got worse with time. In…

Nirmala Mary is the sole bread winner of her five-member family. Her husband is ill and her eldest son lost his job in the fallout of the COVID-19 economic crisis. A resident of S M Nagar slum near Chennai Central, she works at a government hospital and takes home Rs 11,000 per month. A majority of her income is spent on buying essential commodities and paying rent. In such a scenario, the skyrocketing prices of vegetables in the city has been the proverbial last straw. Not just Nirmala's, but low and middle income families across the city are struggling to balance…

The cloudy skies in recent weeks had Vijaykumar Lokhande scurrying to his fields in Mhada taluka in Solapur district. A page layout artist in the city at normal times, he also does farming to supplement his earnings. “I grow pulses and millets like jowar in my five acres of land,” says Vijaykumar. “This year, I am growing tur dal and the excess rainfall helped tur. I have a job in Pune, so I decided to plant tur dal, which doesn’t require my daily presence”. Pune city gets its vegetables, pulses and milk supply from Mulshi, Solapur, Satara, Baramati, Kolhapur etc.…

Twelve-year-old Sarah vividly remembers the first stargazing trip her parents took her on, about 70 kilometers from Bengaluru, just for a glimpse of the comet Neowise. Her father, who proposed this outing, says, “When I was young, my parents would scoff at the idea of going this far just to look at the sky. Living in a city has snatched away such simple pleasures, and I had to make that effort for my little astronomer!” Stargazers aren't the only ones losing out due to the city lights. Studies all over the world have shown that long-term exposure to bright artificial…

Financially, 2020 has been a challenging year for the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC). COVID-19 has left the civic body cash-strapped as a major chunk of its funds were spent on conducting fever camps, arranging shelter homes and other mitigation measures.  Even as it was battling the COVID crisis, Chennai Corporation had to cope with Cyclone Nivar and needed hundreds of crores to set up relief centres in the low-lying areas. The expenses for the GCC have increased phenomenally, but the sources of funds remain the same. In an effort to increase revenue, the Corporation is banking on one of its…