National Institute of Advanced Studies

It is crucial to understand the spatio-temporal dynamics of human–wildlife conflict (HWC) due to its serious consequences. This study analysed 34,596 unprecedented, geotagged HWC data points from the Southern Western Ghats of Karnataka, collected from 2019 to 2023. The data were categorized into human–elephant conflicts (HEC), human–carnivore conflicts (HCC), and other types. To identify the factors influencing these conflicts, we integrated various geospatial layers, including land use land cover (LULC), tree loss data, digital elevation model (DEM), road network, and settlements. We employed a range of geoprocessing and visualization tools such as spatial grid analysis, clustering, kernel density estimation, optimized hotspots, and spatial interpolation using kriging. Elephants, tigers, leopards, wild boars, and gaurs contributed to 99.6% of incidences, with HEC accounting for 92.1% of incidents and 87.4% of the total compensation. Key impacting factors included a loss of 5741 hectares of tree cover over the past two decades (at a rate of 261 ha/year), road network (53%), elevation between 1000–1500 m (86%), and settlements. Elephants were responsible for all types of damages across all proximities. The spatially explicit HWC field data demonstrated significant advantages over the conventional approaches. The generated HWC clusters and hotspots provide valuable insights for effective HWC management practices. These hotspots are crucial for strategic planning and can be effectively applied to other similar landscapes globally.

Developing machine learning algorithms that can classify datasets with higher accuracy and efficiency is crucial in practical applications. Neurochaos learning (NL) is a recently proposed algorithm that is inspired by the chaotic firing of neurons in the brain. NL has shown promise in recent times both in terms of classification accuracy and in the number of samples needed for training. In this study, we propose a novel simplification of the neurochaos learning algorithm by reducing the number of features needed for classification and also reducing the number of hyperparameters needed to be tuned. By using a single feature of the chaotic neural traces (orbit generated by chaotic map) of NL and by using only one hyperparameter, we demonstrate a significant boost in run time of the algorithm while retaining comparable classification accuracy. This single feature could either be the mean of the chaotic neural traces (Tracemean) or the Fluctuation Index (FI) of the chaotic neural traces. The classifier itself could either be a simple cosine similarity (Tracemean ChaosNet, FI ChaosNet) or any of the classical machine learning (ML) classifiers (Tracemean+ML, FI+ML). We compare the performance of these newly proposed simplified NL algorithms on ten publicly available datasets. The proposed simplified NL architectures in this study are able to efficiently classify datasets while taking much less run time. The fact that only a single hyperparameter needs to be tuned in both architectures (Tracemean ChaosNet and FI ChaosNet) makes them very attractive for practical applications with the ease of interpretability.

Residential Ashram Schools for Adivasi communities need improvement. It is proposed to improve infrastructure of schools and hostels, provide adequate financial and human resources, and nutrition and health care. Sufficient attention should be paid to teaching of mathematics and English.

The tragedy of farmers’ suicides cannot be understood in terms of conditions in agriculture alone. It is also influenced by the route agriculturists take to move out of agriculture. This chapter notes that there is a difference in the routes out of agriculture for agricultural labour and for cultivators. As each route generates its own causes for suicides, the problem calls for multiple interventions.

Coal-based thermal power plants will continue to provide electricity in India. It is proposed to retire thermal power plants after 25 years of service. Coal washing should be employed to reduce the inorganic sulphur and ash content. High-efficiency, Low-Emission thermal power plants, currently under construction, can offset the non-availability of electricity from retired thermal power plants.

As millions of agriculturists leave agriculture without adequate non-agricultural activities in the vicinity of their villages they are forced to travel across India for work. The uncertainty of their urban jobs as well as the high cost of living in the city ensure that they only travel to the city for specific assignments. This chapter notes the implications of these trends and calls for interventions that increase the possibility of non-agricultural opportunities emerging closer to the regions where workers are moving out of agriculture.

Coal is the main source of fuel for electricity generation in India. A multidisciplinary ‘Unified Authority' to be created for granting forest, environment clearances, monitoring all activities during mining operation and mine closure. A ‘Sustainable Mining Code' should be enacted to empower the ‘Unified Authority' for sustainable mining operations.

The issue of people’s movements demanding their fair share, rights, and entitlements over natural resources necessitates a strategic strategy to managing these resources and addressing the socio-political conflicts surrounding them. It is essential to move beyond the dominant discourse that views such conflicts solely through the lens of political and security threats and instead examine their socio-political and economic dimensions. Furthermore, a critical engagement is required to understand how successive governments and non-state actors manipulate and misappropriate these movements. Based on extensive field research in the Kalahandi and undivided Koraput districts of Odisha, this policy document identifies the key issues driving these movements as they assert their claims over natural resources. In doing so, it presents its findings and offers policy recommendations to manage natural resources and address the associated conflicts effectively.

The Skill India policy (2015) aimed to address India’s skill deficit and to connect unemployed youth to the job market. However, the research reported in this chapter revealed that most skill training programmes offer mainly short-term courses that produce insufficiently skilled workers and provide access mainly to low-wage, low-end and insecure service sector employment. While many training organisations aim to place rural youth in urban jobs as a means of poverty alleviation or economic mobility, the study showed that available service sector jobs did not provide sufficient income to sustain migrant workers in the city. The policy brief proposes several interventions, such as better designed courses leading to more sustainable employment, or a period of hand-holding after job placement enable youth to find a foothold in urban life and employment.

Preserving cultural heritage sites in India requires defining regulatory boundaries that reflect their historical integrity. While field surveys are effective for assessing a site’s authenticity, they often overlook unprotected or obscured features essential to understanding a site’s historical extent. This policy brief highlights the role of geospatial technologies—remote sensing, GIS, and sat nav—in identifying and delineating heritage landscapes beyond current protected areas. Case studies of Nalanda, Halebidu, Srirangapatna, and Bodhgaya reveal extensive archaeological features outside designated areas, demonstrating the need for boundary reassessment. The Brief recommends: integrating historical records with geospatial data to identify areas requiring protection, creating a national geospatial heritage database, and training heritage professionals in these methods. It also stresses engaging local communities. Leveraging these approaches can ensure more comprehensive conservation, enabling heritage sites to serve as sustainable cultural and economic resources.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently tightened Air Quality Guidelines (AQGs) of 24 h averaged PM2.5 as 15 μg/m3 as against India’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards of 60 μg/m3. This issue is widely debated in Indian media to build a pressure that Indian should revisit its AQI in the light of AQGs of WHO. A recent research based on 4 major Indian cities indicates that even baseline levels exceed the corresponding AQG levels. This led to the conclusion that circumstances do not warrant an immediate review of India’s NAAQS which appears to be adequate. It is stressed that a comprehensive air quality forecasting framework like SAFAR needs to be developed for other cities in India. The work related to impact of ambient air pollution on public health are limited in India and most studies apply exposure-response function applicable to western countries in absence of our own. Therefore, scientific studies must be undertaken to determine the “exposure-response function” and the susceptibility of Indians to different air-pollution related diseases.

Free and open data enables not only increased usage of earth observation data but also opens the innovation gateway amongst the researchers. Such a policy direction proves to be most beneficial not only to researchers but also at the national and global levels as newer value added information products make their way into the market place, thus improving the ease of business too. The paper explores these aspects as part of a new policy direction taken up by India for making remote sensing data easily available for use both in the open domain as well as commercial data. The policy direction in both these domains proves to most interesting with India providing globally the best spatial resolution free data in the open domain at 5.8 m resolution.

This policy brief critically evaluates the conventional methods of measuring poverty in India, based on current consumption. While these estimates effectively explain current poverty, they do not capture chronic poverty or households’ ability to withstand economic shocks. An asset-based approach is more effective in capturing these aspects. Therefore, this brief advocates for using both a consumption-based measure of current poverty and an asset-based measure of vulnerability to provide a comprehensive understanding of the different dimensions of poverty.

Continuous teacher professional development is recognised as the most effective strategy for improving school quality and students’ learning outcomes. An action research study managed and examined online teacher communities of practice for professional learning in rural India through a reform initiative. Over 400 secondary mathematics teachers participated in our 2-year study. The results reveal that the community of practice connected universities and schools and provided teachers with pedagogical and technical support. It encouraged pedagogical content knowledge discussion and diffusion of reform initiative ideas into districts. Well-managed communities of practice assist teacher educators in scaling professional development.

Climate change is the century's most pressing challenge, with impacts transcending national borders, economies, and ecosystems. India and China being the fastest growing economies are the most vulnerable regions to the changing climate. They face huge impacts of climate change being the fastest growing economies, leading to a critical juncture in global climate change governance, embodying a complex interplay of cooperation, opposition, and evolving strategies that will shape the future of climate action. Collaboration between the two states has been obtrusive in diverse multilateral forums, along with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations, in which they have frequently offered united fronts on concepts that include ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR). Simultaneously, the impacts of changing climate cause an additional burden on existing social and economic problems by causing unrest, national rivalries, and situations that are hard to manage. This chapter will examine and outline the multifaceted relationship between both countries on climate change, focusing on their collaborative efforts, competitive dynamics, and the potential pathways forward.

The Afghanistan earthquake of 21 June 2022 ruptured a ~10 km-long fault segment in the North Waziristan–Bannu fault system (NWBFS) located towards the north of the Katawaz Basin. The earthquake was shallow and reportedly caused widespread devastation. In this article, we investigated the long-term, i.e., geological and geomorphological, evidence of deformation along the earthquake segment. For comparison, we also studied the short-term space geodetic and remote sensing results documenting a visible offset between the fault traces. Focusing on the fault modelling and on the published results, it is thus clear that the earthquake rupture did not reach the surface; instead, it stopped in the shallow sub-surface at ~1 km depth. Moreover, the InSAR analyses show some technical issues, such as coherence loss, etc., likely due to severe ground-shaking leaving some gaps in the results; geological and geomorphological evidence complemented this information. As an outcome of this research, we confirmed that InSAR results could generally capture the overall fault geometry at depth, even in cases of blind faulting, whereas the detailed geometry of the tectonic structure, in this case with a right stepping en-echelon pattern, could be successfully captured by combining it with geological and geomorphological approaches and optical remote sensing observations. Accordingly, the right stepping fault generates a restraining bend in the dominantly left-lateral shear zone. Therefore, such fault stepovers are capable of localizing strain and could act as loci for seismic ruptures, bearing strong implications for the seismic hazard assessment of the region, as well as of other strike-slip fault zones.

Purpose Not all headaches are fully defined or characterized by the current classification systems. The variability in headache descriptions and presentation may be influenced by individual or group factors, or may even suggest the discovery of a new or an atypical phenotype. This paper aims to describe a novel headache syndrome characterized by a burning sensation on the vertex. Recent findings Demographic and clinical profiles of 25 patients from a referral headache center in India were analyzed. The syndrome presents as episodic, burning headaches on the vertex (10–20 cm diameter). Most patients were women (16/25), with a mean age of 40.96 years (SD+ 0.75). Episodes occurred 1–3 times weekly or daily, lasting <4 h (range: 1 min to 24 h). Associated symptoms included nausea, vomiting, photophobia, phonophobia, or autonomic features (76%). Common comorbidities were hypertension, diabetes, and polycystic ovarian disease. Neurological exams were normal, except for a slight local temperature rise in 2 patients. Treatment responses varied, though two patients reported reduced frequency and severity after greater occipital nerve (GON) block. Summary This syndrome is not completely compatible with any other primary headache disorders like nummular headache, migraine, cluster, or tension-type headaches. It potentially involves small fiber pathways from the scalp. Further studies are needed to better understand its clinical features, gender predilection, mechanisms, biomarkers, and treatment options.