This review article analyses the effects of the global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy on international relations, particularly with regard to India. The increasing disparity between developed and developing nations, alongside escalating global power disputes, makes this study relevant considering India’s goal to achieve net-zero target by 2070 for sustainable environment. This research is primarily based on the secondary sources of data collected from peer-reviewed publications from Scopus and Web of Science, policy briefs and organizational reports from 2010 to 2025. The paper investigates the impact of the USA - China rivalry in the Indo-Pacific region on India’s energy strategies and planning. Further, this study compares India’s strengths and weaknesses with China by assessing secondary data on renewable energy, critical minerals, technological dependence, and geopolitical factors. The assessment indicates that India is susceptible because of its significant dependence on imported fossil fuels (85

Employing the political ecology framework, this article aims to: (a) evaluate the effectiveness of political ecology as a framework to understand disparities in drinking water access in India, with specific reference to the case studies of Shahpur in Bihar and Myorpur in Uttar Pradesh; (b) investigate how social hierarchy, governance and material risk shape water accessibility; and (c) identify actionable strategies for equitable and participatory water governance, particularly with regard to marginalised communities. This article is based on household surveys, groundwater analysis and spatial assessment to interrogate the dominant narrative that construes 'scarcity' as merely technical or natural. Putting it succinctly, 'scarcity' has been advocated by the hitherto-existing power structures to legitimise economic inequality. The findings of the study demonstrate that water inequities are socially constructed and maintained through power relations, historical marginalisation and sociopolitical hierarchies.

This article theorizes the “digisphere” as an ambient infrastructural environment by investigating how digital media reshapes the communication ecologies of millennial farmers in Kerala. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork (2021–2023), the study traces the trajectory of disruption, negotiation, and systematic replacement initiated by the incursion of digital tools. Conceptually anchored in communication ecology, affordance theory, remediation, media life, convergence, and the emerging notion of the “digisphere,” the study explores how digital technologies initially disrupt traditional communication practices, are gradually negotiated and adapted, and ultimately displace or refashion existing elements in everyday agricultural life. The analysis demonstrates how digital interfaces, such as smartphones, apps, and social platforms, coexist with and/or replace prior tools, roles, and institutions, from the substitution of local agricultural experts by online advisory services to the transformation of informal social interactions into digital spheres of exchange. The paper introduces the “digisphere,” an immersive digital atmosphere, to historicize and contextualize the post-digital rural modernity of South India. Synthesizing the insights from fieldwork, the study formulated a Sequential Integration of Technology into Communication Ecology Model (SITCEM) to represent the phases through which a new technology is integrated into an existing communication ecology. These findings contribute to social sciences, communication theory, rural media studies, and digital anthropology, offering grounded insights into the evolving contours of digitally mediated agricultural practices in the Global South.

Focusing on the coal mining and potential alternative livelihoods in the context of global net-zero targets by using Remote Sensing (RS) and geospatial techniques, this article examines the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes in Dhanbad district during 1994–2024. Deploying the Landsat-7, 8 and 9 MSS Datasets, supervised classification with a Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) and validation through high-resolution imagery and field observations ensure an 85

This article is an attempt to understand the Adivasi landlessness in the context of the implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) in Kerala. Kerala has been projected as a model of development so far as social development indicators are concerned. Based on in-depth personal interviews with 72 Adivasis and three Adivasi and human rights activists in eight districts of Kerala, this article examines whose landholding has been a topic of debate in various political platforms. The study was carried out to explore whether the State's development initiatives and economic growth trajectory had any space for the Adivasis of Kerala. Adivasi landlessness and lack of efficient land distribution may be attributed to the so-called State-led development narratives.

Seeds are the building blocks of food security, and their free exchange amongst the farming community has formed the bedrock for maintaining genetic diversity in addition to food security and sovereignty. The appropriation of production, exchange, and marketing of seeds by the corporate over the past decades has altered the agricultural scene in the Global South. Given the conflicting perspectives, mandates, and practices of multiple stakeholders, this article attempts to critically evaluate seed policies in India considering the cultural, economic, and social undertones that characterise them. From the perspective of the sociology of science, this article attempts to trace the shifts in the decline of the ‘rural,’ erosion of national agriculture, policy gaps, and why values matter in India’s development narratives vis-à-vis science and technology solutions. Further, this article investigates, through a case study of Vrihi Community Seed Bank (CSB), 1 located in the eastern state of Odisha, how CSBs are progressively being seen as a possible long-term solution to combat the diverse challenges posed by changing agro-climatic conditions, increasing corporatisation, and industrialisation of agricultural and allied practices of food production.

There was an uncritical transition from handloom clusters to powerloom clusters initiated by the Government of Odisha in 1972, having a debilitating effect on both handloom and powerloom. This article examines the factors contributing to the plight of powerloom clusters in Odisha. In-depth personal interviews were conducted with various stakeholders of Siminoi powerloom clusters of Dhenkanal District in Odisha. A lack of planning in powerloom, education, government patronage, competitiveness, product diversification, marketing, infrastructure bottleneck, and so on is responsible for the plight of powerloom sector in the state. Hence, there is a need to critically integrate both handloom and powerloom in Odisha.

Drawing on ethno-historical perspectives and ethnographic study, this article depicts the tradition of tattooing and its eventual prohibition among the Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh, India. Locally known as tipe, the tradition of marking body and ban within the Apatani society help us understand how economic and political changes in and around the Ziro valley have had an impact on their social and cultural aspects. The tradition of tattooing was part of Apatani culture for several years, but the beginning of the 1970s witnessed that the youth association of the tribe decided to ban the practice in order to help the tribe progress towards what they considered “modernity” and “development,” albeit positioning themselves from the western civilizational discourse.

This paper examines the emergence of biofuels and its changing institutional mandates having implications for India’s renewable energy policy. Biofuels have commanded much attention in research and policy circles as a renewable energy source providing energy security, creating sustainable livelihoods, mitigating climate change and fostering international trade. Diverting land for biofuels might compromise food security and health for the poor and vulnerable. The NMB was inaugurated in India in 2003 to produce biodiesel from jatropha, a biofuel crop, on unutilized wastelands, and promoted jatropha as a workable solution to this food-versus-fuel quandary owing to the plant’s supposed ability to grow and produce oil-rich seeds on poor quality soils deemed unsuitable for food production. Jatropha’s ability to thrive on barren lands might have been overstated, thus examining whether industrial and agricultural research institutions follow the global demand-pattern of biofuels and raising the concerns over their necessity, funding resources vis-à-vis differing mandates.

Access to primary education is often interpreted as access to school education, resources inside and outside the school, the way different children are treated by teachers and peers, and even access to distinct types of schools. However, different resources are not accessible to all members of a particular social system based on their intersectional identities. The intersection of identities may be gender, caste, class, region, religion, race, and age group in the context of Assam located in the North Eastern Region of India. Further, ‘access’ is a ‘socio-cultural’ construct that involves selection and multiple interpretations. Access to primary education is linked to the socioeconomic, political, and cultural identity of an individual or a group of individuals. It is against this backdrop that this article attempts to understand the experiences and interpretations of access to primary education from an intersectional perspective. The study is based on the in-depth personal interviews with students, teachers, and parents (in total, 75 respondents) in Kamrup district of Assam, located in the North Eastern Region of India, to understand differing perspectives on access to primary education, which reflect their socioeconomic, cultural, and political locales.

This paper deals with the notion of identity in an indigenous setting of the Taniis in Arunachal Pradesh. The role of culture assumes greater significance in constructing the identity and position of Taniis over a period of time. This article is based on ethnographic methods of data collection, such as in-depth personal interviews and participant observation. The focus is primarily on the cultural practice of tattooing among the Taniis of Arunachal Pradesh, India, which was put an end to in the 1970s. By analyzing this practice, we aim to narrate the story of changing identity markers among the members of the community. It was found that change in one cultural identity can impact aspects of the indigenous life. Such loss of identity markers portrays the diplomacy and dialogues that might re-enforce existing urges to homogeneity and monism.

Tuhina Ray and Urmie Ray (2020). On Science: Concepts, Cultures and Limits. London and New York: Routledge, 256 pp., Hardback: £120, eBook: £36.99, ISBN: 9780367442552.

The state of Assam alone produces nearly 53 percent of the total tea production in India. Around one million workers are engaged in the tea industry in India. Tea – as a commercial product first cultivated and expanded by the British – is an outcome of the toil and struggle of the Adivasi workers or indigenous people of central and east India who were made to migrate to Assam under extremely brutal conditions, and they form one of the most oppressed communities in the state. This section of the population has been waging struggles to protect its rights in the state. Tea production is a labor-intensive enterprise in which trade unions should ideally play an assertive role at every stage. However, trade unions in the tea estates are gradually being questioned on their functionality in shaping industrial relations and upholding the rights of the workers. The key respondents, comprising plantation workers, trade union members, owners of the tea estates, and management staff, belong to the major tea producing districts of Assam: Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Jorhat, Golaghat, Sonitpur, and also the lesser producing district, Kamrup. The present study ascertains the role of trade unions in dealing with the key issues faced by plantation workers, such as non-inclusion of women workers and casual workers and its failure to play an effective role in the negotiation or collective bargaining process with management and the state. It is observed that the trade unions function under the principles of the political parties and acquisition of political power is their sole motto.

The handloom industry in India is an ancient cottage industry with a decentralized setup that provides jobs to about 35 million people. Handloom established its reputation in the global market long before the industrial revolution. Today, India’s handloom and spinning wheel produces the largest variation of designs. It continued to flourish despite the oppression of the British Government. In India the powerloom sector is the dominant player in the weaving process. It contributes more than 60 percent of the total textile production. The powerloom units are meeting the textile products required for the domestic market as well as for the export of the same. Against this backdrop this article dwells upon the history of the handloom and powerloom industry in India in general, and Odisha in particular. This article is based on only secondary data.

The advent of the customer–funder–policymaker as a prominent element in scientific practice since mid-1990s in India and intensifying thereafter seems to have forced scientists to (re)negotiate scientific boundaries and to do some of the delicate boundary work. The challenge for scientists is to not only bring science ‘close enough’ to politics and policy demonstrating social accountability, legitimacy and relevance but also avoid either science or politics overextending into the other’s territory—a prospect that is evidently disorienting and poses serious threats to idealised identities of science and the scientific community. Based on in-depth personal interviews with 68 agricultural biotechnologists in 24 scientific institutions in India, this article examines the factors responsible for the shift in the practice of science from being a curiosity-driven activity to contract obligation. Through the radical changes in science funding and policy-orientation in India since mid-1990s, scientists seem to be vigorously mapping out the cultural spaces for science and for their own identities as forming the scientific community. In this context, scientists included in the study are not actually in the process of (re)classifying a satisfactory version of ‘science’ and ‘policy’ through their work. Instead, they are engaged in multiple versions of actively negotiated science–policy boundaries, many of which seem to have different qualities and make different demands on them as researchers/scientists.