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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's Water Crisis
This 40-minute podcast gives an overview of the grave water crisis that a semi-arid country like India is facing.
Unlike the US or China, India relies mainly on ground water, says Vishwanath S, who has worked in the area of water conservation for over three decades. According to him, India extracts more ground water than the other two countries put together.
Since the 1960s, the country has used ground water so indiscriminately that in many parts of Southern and Western India entire communities have had to migrate in search of water. "If this continues, parts of India will remain unoccupied," says Vishwanath. Not to mention severe forest depletion, he adds.
One of the main reasons for India's larger water crisis is the flooding of hybrid varieties of wheat and rice seeds from the US in the 1960s, says Vishwanath. India, a newly independent nation back then, was fixated on food production, not water depletion.
Today, the nation wants to do something about its water availability; however, it seems to lack imagination. Barring a few exceptions, mentioned in the podcast, the country still seems to use water like it is an inexhaustible resource.
India's institutional frameworks of water management are relics of the 20th century, while the water availability is a 21st century problem. The trick is in bridging that gap.
