Future Shock  Man-made Disasters or Nature's Fury?  When the floods struck the surprised people of Surat, famous for its diamond-cutting industry, no one had any doubt that more than the wrath of the rain god their misery had a lot to do with the callousness of its rulers. Not only did they not anticipate the impact of the rain in the adjoining areas, including Maharashtra, they failed to quantify how much water should be released from the dam. If there was a man-made disaster then this was one... More

Cover Story

Remember Erin Brockovich?
It’s like the peak of summer. The heat moves like insomnia on the scorching streets of the Capital and the fumes of the millions of swanky cars and car-trucks — Scorpios, Tata Sumos, Innovas — condense and hang like poison inside the lungs.
By Amit Sengupta Delhi

Damn it, this was designed!
The Surat floods, with hundreds dead and missing and crores in financial losses, were an administrative disaster
By Himanshu Thakkar Delhi

Modidom’s watery grave
This was no nature’s curse. This was man-made. A post-mortem of the devastating flash floods in Surat puts the onus squarely on the Gujarat government
By Ashok Patel Surat

The unbearable lightness of big dams
After repeated floods, will the government evaluate the performance of the big dams and embankments and decommission those that are non-functional, without making it a prestige issue?
By Dinesh Kumar Mishra Jamshedpur

Cry me a river
When a river system is brutalised for big dams, disasters are bound to happen. But why this cover-up?
By Himanshu Upadhyaya Delhi

Mr Frog weds Ms Frog
Forget the floods, 22 districts of Assam are reeling with drought. While the earth cracks, people are into witchcraft. But the gods are not pleased 
By Ravishankar Ravi Guwahati

Desert into sea…
Dearth of rainfall in the ‘wet’ Northeast and unprecedented floods in ‘barren’ Rajasthan have left people perplexed over nature’s solemn twist
By Monika Nautiyal Delhi