Elemental India : The Natural World In Crisis

by Meera Subramanian

Around the world, people are increasingly facing a future that is crowded and hot, thirsty or drowning, subject to violent weather extremes and a changing climate, where the rich and poor inhabit separate spheres and governments are unable or unwilling to confront the most vital challenges their citizens face. For India, this reality is the very tangible present. In this lyrical exploration of life, loss and survival, Meera Subramanian travels in search of the ordinary people and micro-enterprises determined to revive Indias ravaged natural world. An engineer-turned-farmer brings organic food to Indian plates. Villagers resuscitate a river run dry. Cook stove designers persist in their quest for smokeless fire. Biologists bring vultures back from the brink of extinction. A bold young Bihari woman teaches young adolescents the fundamentals of sexual health. By investigating these five environmental crises, Subramanian discovers individual stories that renew hope for a nation that has the potential to create a sustainable and prosperous future, for India, the Earth and all her inhabitants. About the Author Meera Subramanian is an award-winning journalist whose work has been published in the New York Times, Nature, Virginia Quarterly Review, Orion and multiple anthologies. She was a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, is an editor for Killing the Buddha, and earned her graduate degree in journalism from New York University. She lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and can be found at www.meerasub.org and @meeratweets.

Genres: Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2015

About the author

Meera Subramanian is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes narrative nonfiction about home, in the personal and planetary sense, in a time of climate crisis. Her work has appeared in publications such as Nature, The New York Times, The NewYorker.com, and Orion, where she is a contributing editor. She is the co-author of A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis, a nonfiction YA graphic novel (coming out in March, 2026) and author of A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis. She also teaches creative nonfiction at Sewanee School of Letters MFA program in Tennessee. A National Geographic Explorer and recipient of multiple grants, fellowships, and residencies, she is a perpetual wanderer who can't stop digging in the dirt to plant perennials and looking up in search of birds from her home base atop a glacial moraine on the Atlantic's western edge. You can find her at www.meerasub.org.

Reviews

[T.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really well-written book, with an excellent choice of subjects to focus on and an engaging form of reportage. It is after a long time that I find myself with such a book in hand that links people and land and the rest of nature in India, which I feel like I should recommend to everyone to read for the quality of the writing and the perceptive coverage of the underlying issues.

This book really needs to be out there more prominently than the half a dozen or so other new books on wildlife/nature conservation and environmental issues in India that have hit the bookshelves over the last year or so.

[Vaidya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprised there are only 2 reviews of this excellent book. There should be more people reading this to know how things are and how they are changing. While talking about all the things that have gone wrong, it is a book of hope, about how people are coming together to bring change, to themselves and then to the world around them. It could be in how they grow their food, improving the lives of millions in how they cook their food, saving endangered vultures, saving every drop of water in parched places or women who decided to stand up and say "enough!"

[Shubham Bansal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book to get introduced to the environmental and health effects of aping the west in a rush towards development. Brings in stories of people who are experimenting with alternatives - organic farming, water harvesting and education for all.

Could have been a more in-depth book, seemed a bit anecdotal