Elemental India: The Natural World at a Time of Crisis and Opportunity

Join award-winning journalist and Fulbright-Nehru fellow (2013-14) Meera Subramanian for a multimedia presentation exploring the human and global health implications of India’s ravaged environmental landscape. Her narrative nonfiction book, Elemental India: The Natural World at a Time of Crisis and Opportunity, is based on travel across the country, learning about the ordinary people and micro-enterprises determined to guide India into a sustainable future. Publishers’ Weekly gave it a starred review and Kirkus Reviews called it “right thinking and accusatory in all the right places.” Meet an organic farmer who is reviving his land after the onslaught of the Green Revolution; villagers in Rajasthan who are resuscitating a river run dry; cook stove designers questing after a smokeless fire; and biologists bringing vultures back from the brink of extinction. And in Bihar, one of India’s most impoverished states, meet a bold young woman teaching young adolescents the fundamentals of sexual health. By investigating these five environmental crises, framed around the five elements, Subramanian discovers individual stories that renew hope for a nation that has the potential to create a sustainable and prosperous future, for India, the earth, and all her inhabitants.