News stories by Diwash Gahatraj

DELHI, February 20 (IPS) - Pyari Hessa, 26, balances long shifts as a loco traffic controller at a steel company in Jamshedpur with evening football practice on the same turf where professionals train.

BANGALORE & PAKHIRALAY, India, October 15 (IPS) - Bapi Mondal’s morning routine in Bangalore is a world away from his ancestral village, Pakhiralay, in the Sundarbans, West Bengal. He wakes before dawn, navigates heavy traffic, and spends eight long hours molding plastic battery casings. It’s not the life his honey-gathering forefathers knew, but factors like extreme storms, rising seas, and deadly soil salinity forced the 40-year-old to abandon centuries of family tradition and travel miles away to work in a concrete suburban factory.

ABU DHABI, October 13 (IPS) - As global conservation leaders gather in Abu Dhabi for the IUCN World Conservation Congress, communities in the hills of Darjeeling, thousands of kilometers away, are still counting their losses. In early October, heavy rains triggered deadly landslides that buried homes, blocked key roads, and left several people dead. The destruction has once again exposed how vulnerable India’s mountain regions are to extreme weather.

KATHMANDU & NEW DELHI, September 18 (IPS) - Claims that Ravi Laxmi Chitrakar, wife of former Nepali Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal, was burned alive in her home—fake. The reports of an angry mob destroying and vandalizing the Pashupatinath Temple—fake. Allegations that protesters were demanding a Hindu nation in Nepal—fake. As Kathmandu and other Nepali cities erupted in unrest last week, the fire of fake news spread just as fiercely across Nepal and into neighboring India and the rest of the world.

JHAPA, Nepal,, July 31 (IPS) - Four Bhutanese Lotshampa refugees—Aasis Subedi, Santosh Darji, Roshan Tamang, and Ashok Gurung—filed an appeal in Nepal’s Supreme Court on July 27, challenging a government order that would deport them from Nepal.

JHAPA, Nepal, May 16 (IPS) - Sitting in his small hut in the Beldangi refugee camp in Jhapa district, Nepal, Narayan Kumar Subedi feels relieved that his son, Aasis Subedi, is safe.

NEW DELHI, Apr 23 (IPS) - The Chel Snakehead fish, thought to be extinct, has made a dramatic comeback to the eastern Himalayan ecosystem after more than 85 years of absence near its source river in India.

NEW DELHI, Mar 28 (IPS) - "The size of the faucet highlights the magnitude of the problem. It makes the problem impossible to ignore. We're used to throwing things 'away'—but when we're confronted with what happens when 'away' is not an option, I think it creates an emotional wake-up call," says Benjamin Von Wong.

SHNGIMALWLEIN, India, Sep 06 (IPS) - Kmoin Wahlang, a 76-year-old woman, starts her running training every morning at 4 a.m. Dressed in track pants, a jacket, and running shoes, she sets out to navigate the hilly terrain of the small village of Shngimawlein in the southwest Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya, a state in northeastern India.

UDULA, India, Jul 02 (IPS) - On a scorching May morning, Gajendra Madhei, a farmer from Mamudiya village, arrives at the local bazaar in Udula, a town in Odisha's Mayurbhanj district. He displays freshly caught red weaver ants, known locally as kai pimpudi, in the bustling tribal market.