Your podcast discovery platform
Curious minds select the most fascinating podcasts from around the world. Discover hand-piqd audio recommendations on your favorite topics.
piqer for: Climate and Environment Globalization and politics
Raksha Kumar is a multimedia journalist focusing on human rights, politics and social injustices. Since 2011, she has reported for The New York Times, BBC, Guardian, TIME, South China Morning Post, Foreign Policy, Scroll.in and The Hindu.
In March 2018, she was awarded the National Foundation for India Media Award for her reportage on land rights in India. In 2017, she was shortlisted for Kurt Schork Memorial Awards in International Journalism. For her work on land conflicts in India, she was awarded the Chameli Devi Award for Outstanding Media Personality in 2016.
As a reporter, her focus areas are land and forest rights of the most vulnerable communities. However, since these issues cannot be looked at in isolation, Raksha found herself increasingly reporting on armed conflict around resource extraction in places like Chhattisgarh and Kashmir.
In 2015, she wrote, shot and directed a documentary film on Rationalists in Contemporary India. It was aired by India's public broadcaster, Doordarshan. The film has been screened in 29 locations across the country until now.
The same year, Raksha was selected as a Chevening Fellow by the University of Westminster to research on Hindu Right in the UK. This helped Raksha build on her post graduate dissertation which was on Hindu Fundamentalists in India.
With a Fulbright Scholarship for Leadership Development, she went to the Columbia University in New York City to pursue a Masters in Science. As a student, she was offered the Scripps Howard Fellowship to report from Israel and the West Bank. Since 2011, Raksha has reported from 11 countries across the world.
Raksha worked as an editor at NDTV, leading English news channel in India. She was the editorial head of a two-hour prime time news show, where she lead a team of about 20 junior journalists.
A graduate of Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi, Raksha was a dedicated student and a passionate public speaker.
India Floods: More Than 400 People Die In Man Made Disaster
About 20 days ago, due to extreme rainfall, the southern Indian state of Kerala witnessed severe flooding. In less than a fortnight more than 400 people were killed. This is the worst floods that Kerala has seen in about a hundred years.
Currently, the governments of Kerala and India are working to limit diseases and epidemic outbreaks. Northern Kerala is also experiencing a severe shortage of medicines. About 100,000 people require to be rehabilitated and housed.
This is an in-depth interview with G. Madhavan Nair, scientist and former Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation, a premier science and technology institute in the country.
The interview makes several important points:
A lot of unauthorised encroachments have taken place in Kerala's forest area. The landslides are partly because of such encroachments. The other factor is deforestation. Protection of forest resources is not on the agenda of any government. The damage caused by the rain in Kerala is a man-made factor.
The article thus indicates that irresponsible carbon emissions, deforestation and disregard to the environment are the main causes for the flooding. If protecting the forest is not explicitly on the agenda of any government, India has reasons for introspection. And there couldn't be a better time for it.
