Tag: Nature in the City
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Disciplining Non-human Bodies in the City
Aditi Dhillon & Ajay Immanuel Gonji In his seminal essay Why Look at Animals? John Berger (2009) talks about how, in the past, people kept domestic animals because they were useful to them – as guard dogs, hunting dogs, mice-killing cats, and so on. Later, people began to keep animals regardless of their usefulness, a…
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Life in the Fastlane: Roadkill in the Anthropocene
Ajay Immanuel Gonji My first close encounter with roadkill was during fieldwork for my Master’s internship, way back in 2013. I remember seeing the bloated body of a large male nilgai, fully intact, on the footpath of the Aruna Asaf Ali Marg – a 6-lane highway bifurcating the Sanjay Van city forest and the Jawaharlal…
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WATER QUALITY OF THE YAMUNA RIVER DURING THE FIRST LOCKDOWN
Divya Mehra and Shiwani The Coronavirus pandemic which has affected almost every part of the world is considered to be the biggest economic and health crisis of the present time. To contain the spread of the Covid-19 disease, in the initial phases of the pandemic, many countries went into lockdown, resulting in the temporary suspension…
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Locust In The City
Vijaylakshmi Suman The rise of the pandemic resulted in people being confined to their homes for months. Since then, a lot of news has emerged where people in the city had witnessed instances of ‘reclamation by nature’. For some, it was a sign of reclamation and recovery, while some quoted this as an absence of…
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Where Access is Denied
Ajay Immanuel Gonji Introduction Urban ecology is an evolving framework which integrates society and the environment at multiple scales. And while urban ecologists look for commonalities across urban ecosystems, in recent times, there has been much focus on the local and unique contexts which shape the socio-ecological character of each city (Grimm et al., 2015).…
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Nature Through a Shifting Lens
Vijaylakshmi A few days back, during one of the conversations with my friends, we were reminiscing about some old travel memories and how effortless it was to have a small weekend getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city. We would generally plan a vacation out of the city as an opportunity to be…
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Reclaiming Lost Ground
Divya Mehra On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the COVID-19 or Coronavirus Disease 2019 outbreak as a ‘Pandemic’. As the number of COVID-19 cases increased manifold outside China, where it first originated, soon the enormity and seriousness of the COVID-19 threat dawned on most human beings on the planet. According to…
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Animal Movement and Human Response Amidst the Lockdown
Shashank Bhardwaj As most people around the globe sit at home to fight the global pandemic (COVID-19), the hustle and bustle of most city streets are missing. To curb this pandemic, many countries have adopted social distancing measures, including partial and complete nationwide lockdowns. While such drastic measures may be important, there’s no denying the…
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Monkey Business: Expressing Intentions and Emotions
Rashmi Singh* & Ajay Immanuel Gonji A few days ago, an email thread on the student mailing group of Ambedkar University Delhi, Kashmere Gate (henceforth AUDKG) was particularly interesting. The subject of the discussion was not academic, political or social in nature, but was actually over food! Apparently, a plate of noodles was left abandoned…
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Human-generated Food and Urban Wildlife
Ajay Immanuel Gonji In an earlier blog post that I had written, I talked about how urban wildlife depends on a unique combination of naturally occurring and human-generated food. In most cities of the globe, it is not uncommon to witness birds and mammals benefitting from anthropogenic food resources. This food may be derived either…