By Yogesh Nerpagar, Managing Director, WASHMITRA India has made significant progress in expanding water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure. Government programmes such as the Swachh Bharat Mission and Jal Jeevan Mission have helped increase access to toilets, tap water, handwashing stations, solar pumps and water-treatment systems. These investments have changed

By Kishore Kale, Director, TrashTech Every year, lakhs of Pilgrims (Warkaris) walk hundreds of kilometres to Pandharpur as part of Maharashtra’s centuries-old Wari pilgrimage. While this sacred journey represents devotion, equality, and community spirit, it also generates a significant amount of plastic waste, particularly single-use water bottles, food packaging and

Citizens unite across political and religious lines, calling for firm enforcement, public accountability and protection from noise pollution. By  ImpactLens Correspondent More than 1,000 citizens took to the streets of Pune on Sunday, 6 September 2026, demanding a complete ban on high-decibel DJ systems during festivals, religious processions, political gatherings

How schools and universities can use AI to deepen learning – without outsourcing the learner By Prof Ujjwal K. Chowdhury Education is entering a strange new phase: a student can hand in a fluent essay, working program or persuasive presentation before understanding the ideas inside it. The answer is not

By Soumyashree Mohanty, ImpactLens Correspondent You may have friends or relatives living abroad. When they visit India, conversations often turn to everyday issues such as waste, pollution and traffic. They may tell us how clean their surroundings are and how well things are organised. We often hear about clean streets,

Why volunteering — for nature, for the hungry, for the sick — is not capitalism’s alibi but the slow architecture of the world after it By Prof Ujjwal K Chowdhury, Political Analyst & Senior Academic A recent critique argued that volunteering doesn’t save the world — it saves capitalism, laundering