India In Transition

What does it actually mean to be climate literate in a changing India? Climate change is often presented as a problem of science, technology and policy. But understanding it also means understanding cities, forests, biodiversity, livelihoods, inequality, culture and our relationship with the natural world around us. In this episode of India in Transition, Heeta Lakhani and Pranshu Patel are joined by Dr Harini Nagendra, ecologist, author and Director of the School of Climate Change and Sustainability at Azim Premji University. We begin with Harini’s own journey from microbiology to ecology and explore why climate education needs to move beyond disciplinary silos. Harini argues that science and social science need to speak to each other much more closely — but also that the humanities, storytelling, art, culture and indigenous knowledge remain significantly underused in how we communicate and understand environmental change. The conversation then asks a bigger question: how do we build climate literacy…

Why some experiences are recognised and others dismissed? And what does climate change have to do with the way we feel? We often recognise climate change through the things we can see: extreme heat, floods, cyclones, polluted air or disappearing ecosystems. But its impact can also show up in quieter ways, irritability during extreme heat, guilt over everyday choices, anxiety about the future, helplessness, overwhelm or simply the feeling that something is changing around us and we don't quite know how to name it. In this episode of India in Transition, Heeta Lakhani and Pranshu Patel are joined by counselling psychologists Nidhi Goswami and Ruchi Bhutada to explore the intersection of climate change and mental health in India. At the centre of the conversation is a simple question: does something have to become catastrophic before it counts as a climate experience? We talk about why climate and mental health are still often treated as separate issues, whether labels such as climate anxiety, eco-anxiety and…

In this episode of India in Transition, Heeta Lakhani and Pranshu Patel sit down with Ashish Khanna, Director General of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), to explore why solar is increasingly becoming a question of energy security, economic strategy and development not just climate action. As geopolitical instability and fuel price shocks expose the risks of relying on imported fossil fuels, Ashish explains why countries across the Global South are looking more closely at energy that can be generated domestically, and why solar could become an even bigger part of India’s transition. But scaling solar is about much more than installing more panels. We talk about the need for energy storage and flexible electricity grids, rooftop solar, solar-powered agriculture and decentralised renewable energy. We also look at some of the harder questions around critical minerals, recycling, battery and panel waste, and what a circular solar economy could look like. The conversation then moves to the people behind the…

What does it mean to spend more than four decades fighting for nature and still believe there is something worth fighting for? For the first episode of India in Transition, Pranshu Patel and Heeta Lakhani sit down with Bittu Sahgal, one of India’s most prominent voices for wildlife and nature conservation.Bittu has spent much of his life making the case that our ecological future cannot be separated from the choices India makes about development, economics and society. This conversation looks back at that lifetime of work, at what India has understood about conservation, what we continue to get wrong, how the environmental movement has changed and what keeps someone hopeful after witnessing decades of ecological loss and change. At the centre of the episode is a question we keep coming back to: What does a lifetime of hope look like? And perhaps more importantly, what can the rest of us learn from it? About Bittu Sahgal: Bittu Sahgal, Editor Sanctuary Asia, Head of the Sanctuary Nature Foundation, and…