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COVID-19: Crisis for humans, rehab for nature.

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The Coronavirus or COVID-19 has caused extreme carnage throughout the world. The virus, though not as deadly as previous viruses encountered by humans like SARS, MERS and H1N1, is extremely infectious. The rapidly spreading virus has now infected more than a million people worldwide and proven fatal for about 80,000 people, making it the most lethal pandemic of our times. The disease has caused a situation of panic worldwide, reducing bustling economies to stagnant countries under lockdown. The virus has also posed a challenge for the medical world, our medical prowess looks meagre in front of this microscopic virus. It is truly a nightmare for our community and also a test of our strength to combat future pandemics. Image Credits: AFP and Hindustan Times To control the spread of this deadly virus, many countries are under complete lockdown, with their entire population under self-isolation. This means complete shut down of several industries, manufacturing units, cessation of p
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Why Chennai Water Crisis is a Man-Made Disaster and what needs to be done to save Indian cities from rapidly depleting water sources?

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What is Chennai going through? Source : The Financial Express This is the second time in the last four years that Chennai has made news about its extreme rainfall patterns. While four years back, the city was devastated by heavy rain and destructive floods; this time around, the havoc has been created by meagre rain and widespread drought forcing people to rely on water tankers as the taps have run dry. The drastic shift in rainfall patterns can be attributed partly to Climate Change, but is largely a repercussion of  our indifference towards water conservation aggravated by high temperatures and a Heat Wave. Chennai's water sources are at a 70 year low, holding just 1% of the water they had at the same time last year. The extent of the drought can be realised by the fact that businesses are asking their employees to work from home, restaurants have shut down, people have to rely on municipal water tankers and public restrooms have become defunct. Chennai's Puzha
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Forming SES DTU

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Back to college after a long summer break, this time entering the university gates as a second year student instead of a freshman, the campus was brimming with activities for the freshmen and all the student societies were open for recruitments, trying to attract new members. Closely analysing all the societies, I noticed that there was none that focussed primarily on environmental protection and conservation and being an ardent advocate for environmental safety, I decided to form one. Enthusiastic about this new idea, I called up my friend Vasudev to discuss about forming a society and as we started building upon our idea, we realised that we had negligible knowledge about the process of forming a college society. Sometimes I feel that ideas that pop up out of nowhere suddenly have a much better success rate than pre planned and highly discussed ones. So, this random intuition of forming a college organisation for spreading environmental awareness became my own enterprise. Th
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Interning at Chintan and E-Waste solutions

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Since childhood, I have been observing the brutality with which we humans have treated the environment, which has highly sensitized me towards environmental issues, imbibing in me an inherent zeal to work for the earth and spread more awareness about the problems encountered by nature. Wrapping up my freshman year at college, I got the opportunity to work with Chintan, channelising my interests into something productive and exciting.  Working at Chintan was a very enjoyable experience for me, being surrounded by like-minded people with a collective passion for environmental conservation. My work at the internship included reading and researching about various topics and soaking knowledge from any source possible.  Researching about E-Waste, my seniors at Chintan sent me a documentary about the improper disposal of E-Waste and the far reaching implications it had on us. The documentary was called "E-Waste, Citizens at Risk" and watching it, brought about in me a
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HINDsight : "Human Induced Natural Disasters"

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   If we try to figure out the mindset of the human race, for most part of our existence on the planet we have persistently striven for economic, scientific and technological development. Blinded by the extensive strife to ascend the pinnacle of success, we have dismissed the obstructive effects of our activities which have rather left an unerasable mark on the face of the earth. Through our constant efforts to scale the heights of economic and technological advancements and increasing inclination towards a more capitalistic mindset, we have changed the environment surrounding us in many ways. Changes which might even backfire on the human race in form of "unnatural" disasters or rather "Human Induced Natural Disasters". We often blame humans for climate change, but our actions have also had a huge impact on the changing geography and topography. As per a report published by Al Jazeera on Man-made disasters, between 2004 and 2010, small landslides (not caused by
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Delhi Waste Worries and Solutions

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THE CURRENT SCENARIO Source : The Hindustan Times The current situation of waste disposal and treatment in the capital narrates a story of utter mismanagement and unsustainability. As of  now,  to ensure proper management and disposal, the civic bodies have hired concessionaires who collect waste from door to door and segregate the waste at the site. the recyclable garbage goes to recycling sites and the rest is dumped in one of the four existing landfills. A fleet of 409 trucks are engaged in the process. However, at the ground level this system is in a state of complete chaos. The RWAs have often complained that the waste collection on a daily basis is non existent and door to door collection is just a mere illusion forcing people to dump waste in nooks and empty plots of land creating miniature landfills. Out of all the waste generated in the capital, about 50% is fit for composting, and 30% is recyclable which leaves 20% of the waste to be dumped in the landfills. But if w
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Climate Change : It is real.

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The Earth has been around for a 4.5 billion years now and throughout it's existence, our planet has witnessed changing climatic conditions from a ball of fire to even ice ages. But never has ever the earth experienced what we are witnessing first hand, which I like to call human induced climate change. Even after the gruesome act of humanised environmental destruction, there are some of us who dismiss the gravity of climate change as something unreal and nonexistent. So, I would really like to bring them closer to reality before it hits them in the face hard. The natural changes in the earth's climatic cycles have occurred due to certain variations in the earth's orbit, altering the solar flux. But if we look at the past few trends of climate change, the deviations in the climate patterns have been largely associated with the exponential growth of Carbon Dioxide emissions, accelerating the Greenhouse Effect. source: https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ Ancient and s
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