Elemental India: The Natural World at a Time of Crisis and Opportunity

'What happens in India may turn out - even more than China - to be the key to the kind of environmental future the planet faces. Very few people are qualified to tell the story with as much clarity compassion and character-driven power as Meera Subramanian.'

- Bill McKibben author of Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist

'Meera Subramanian has written an eye-opening and even inspiring book about a country that is so often terribly misunderstood by the West. Her serious but never morose storytelling introduces us to an India that is neither basket case nor Shangri-la but a diverse land full of ordinary people questing for an extraordinary goal: a happier greener future for 1.2 billion of their fellow citizens and for the rest of us too. We should all be rooting them on.'

- Dan Fagin Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation

'Elemental India is at once sweeping and intimate - a smart informative richly reported book full of memorable characters.'

- Elizabeth Kolbert author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

'This is a necessary book. And Meera Subramanian is the perfect person to be writing it.' - Suketu Mehta author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

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 that are determined to revive India's ravaged natural world. An engineer-turned-farmer brings organic food to Indian plates. Villagers resuscitate a river that had 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. Through an investigation of these five crises Subramanian finds renewed hope for a nation that has the potential to create a sustainable and prosperous future - for itself the Earth and all her inhabitants.