Can the Sundarbans Speak?: Multispecies Collectivity in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

This article focuses on nonhuman agency in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children to offer an account of postcolonial multispecies collectivity as an alternative to the national collectivity that most previous scholars have seen at stake in that novel. Focusing particularly on the Sundarbans section of the novel, the article draws on multispecies justice and biosemiotics to recalibrate Gayatri Spivak’s question “Can the Subaltern Speak.” Ultimately, the article posits that the Sundarbans forest can indeed speak and that this agency highlights the need for postcolonial studies to more fully consider multispecies approaches and bioregionalism

Posthuman Time Beings

This thesis examines the potential ethics and politics of the cosmopolitan subject in a posthuman world in Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. Cosmopolitanism refers to the idea that all human beings live in a global community and are citizens of the world. Although cosmopolitanism initially emerged as a humanist idea with its ethics and politics lying only within the realm of the human, the novel moves beyond this anthropocentric approach due to its setting in the Anthropocene. I assert that Tale showcases a posthuman turn in the literary narrative by depicting environmental agency in the processes of literary production and circulation within the novel. With this posthuman turn, there is also a posthuman shift in the epistemological framework of the novel as it refers to the cosmopolitan subject as a “time being,” including both the human and the nonhuman within it. However, I contend that this temporal mode of cosmopolitanism diminishes the ethics and politics of the cosmopolitan subject due to the ontological challenges to reality that come up with the distortion of literary time. Instead, I suggest that Tale turns toward literary and environmental affect to grapple with the dilemma of posthuman cosmopolitanism and to materialize the cosmopolitan connection, while also maintaining an affective ethics and politics that transcends the human figure

Energy productivity of Indian agriculture: are energy guzzling districts generating higher agricultural value?

Groundwater irrigation has been central to India’s irrigated agriculture. India is the largest extractor of groundwater, pumping nearly 250 km3 every year for irrigation. The abstraction of groundwater is closely coupled with access to subsidized or free electricity in the country. Supply of free electricity has led to the perverse groundwater-energy nexus in the country. This nexus has resulted in grave economic and environmental repercussions. There is a mounting fiscal burden of energy subsidies in the country, which has led many power utilities at the helm of bankruptcy. At the same time, free power has attributed to the groundwater depletion at an alarming rate in many parts of the country. Hence, it becomes important to understand whether these economic and environmental costs of groundwater irrigation are commensurate with its benefits. This study takes a look at the energy productivity of groundwater irrigated agriculture in the districts of India and assesses its contribution to the agricultural output

Piped distribution of irrigation in SSP [Sardar Sarovar Project]: making sense of the chaos

Piped distribution of irrigation water has helped in faster expansion of sub-minor distribution network of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP). An ITP study across six minor canal commands though shows that majority of the intended beneficiaries continue to depend on surface-lift or ground water sources for irrigation. The defunct status of WUAs, responsible for managing operation and maintenance at sub-minor level, in most of these locations raises question on the efficacy of the present participatory model. Farmers are however arranging for irrigation through private initiatives and are able to access assured irrigation using the same canal water. Is it time we provide legitimacy to these initiatives to enhance utilization of the SSP water

Carbon footprint of India’s groundwater irrigation

India has an intricate nexus of groundwater irrigation, energy and climate. Subsidized electricity supply has led to unregulated groundwater pumping, causing a decrease in groundwater level and increase in carbon emissions. This complex nexus necessitates estimation of carbon emissions from groundwater irrigation. The study uses actual pumping data on 20.5 million groundwater structures from the Fifth Minor Irrigation Census (reference year 2013–14) to estimate carbon emissions. The estimates show that groundwater irrigation emits 45.3–62.3 MMT of carbon annually, contributing 8–11% of India’s total carbon emission. This analysis shows deep tubewells have a huge carbon footprint, and their growing number is a serious environmental concern. Spatial analysis reveals India’s western and peninsular region, which houses 85% of the country’s over-exploited groundwater blocks, contributes most to carbon emission. Moreover, this region hosts 27 districts which are groundwater–energy–climate nexus hotspots, together accounting for 34% of carbon emissions from groundwater irrigation. Comparison with the previous estimate reveals that carbon emission from groundwater irrigation nearly doubled between 2000 and 2013. Findings of this study are vital to the discourse on the increasing environmental costs of groundwater pumping in the country and will contribute to carbon emission mitigation strategies