Science and environment journalist. Consulting Editor @timesofindia. Contributing @sciencemagazine. Tips etc: [email protected]
Mumbai
Joined July 2011
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Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
3,166 construction sites in Mumbai have air sensors on display. I wanted to know if they could be trusted, so I started checking.
Here's what bothers me most: the builders install these monitors, the builders maintain them, and the builders decide what residents see at their gate every morning. Nobody certifies the numbers before people rely on them.
Unless this data is verified, it will mislead the very people it's meant to protect: the parent deciding if a child can play outside, the elderly neighbour stepping out for a walk.
A pollution monitor nobody checks is just another hoarding. @CMOMaharashtra @Dev_Fadnavis @mybmc @mpcb_official @HTMumbai @Hepzia
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
EXCLUSIVE: India’s biggest news publishers including Ambani's Network18, Adani's NDTV, Indian Express, Times Internet & others mount the most high-profile challenge yet to Modi’s privacy law, warning it would “render investigative journalism a benign and neutered recorder of events.”
DNPA (@publishers_news) has taken the law to the Supreme Court. They argue it would trample investigative work and let New Delhi identify journalists’ sources.
The provisions “constitute pre-censorship which is anathema to any democracy worth its name,” the group’s 698-page filing says.
The key concerns:
🔹 Consent: requiring a journalist to notify the subject of an investigation and seek consent “would allow that subject to destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses”
🔹 Erasure: people can withdraw consent and demand their data be erased, which the group says could force publishers to unpublish or heavily redact news reports
🔹 Sources: a “nakedly unguided” power to demand information that “can extend to privileged communications in possession of a reporter or the informant”
In a letter to the government, the group said India “has chosen to grant broad exemptions to the state, while failing to extend any corresponding protection to the press.”
reuters.com/business/media-t…
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
No words.
The @MoEFCC’s empowered committee has recommended dumping 650 million litres per day of treated industrial wastewater from Surat’s chemical and textile hub into the #GulfOfKhambhat—a highly sensitive, biodiverse #estuarine ecosystem home to #mangroves, mudskippers & and migratory shorebirds. The irony of the #environment ministry sanctioning deep-sea dumping that threatens marine life and local fisherfolk livelihoods.
#SaveGulfOfKhambhat #MarineEcology #Gujarat
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
Cars need roads. Who wants flamingos anyway? So what if it's an internationally listed wetland?
680 mangroves lost for good as Thane road near Ramsar site gets go-ahead indianexpress.com/article/ci…
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
NWMI filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court over the assault and arbitrary detention of women journalists by Delhi Police while reporting on October 10–11, seeking enforceable safeguards for police-media interactions during protests. #pressfreedom #JournalismIsNotACrime
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
‘The story of the SIR is both an account of large-scale voter disenfranchisement in India and one of institutional crisis,’ @gautambhatia88 in @TIME time.com/article/2026/10/13/…
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
Inside the police crackdown on lawyers and journalists.
My report: decodeinternet.in/digital-st…
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
A flash flood swept through Nepal's Budhi Gandaki river system early on 11 October, carrying mud, sediment and debris downstream.
Preliminary accounts indicate that the failure of a temporary landslide blockage near Chumchet, Gorkha, may have triggered the event.
With search, rescue and evacuation efforts are underway, our prayers are with everyone affected. We stand in solidarity with the Government of Nepal providing technical support as required.
Read the full press release: icimod.org/press-releases/la…
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
At least 16 journalists were brutally detained while covering public demonstrations in #India. In addition to the four journalists already mentioned, RSF has learned that Anushka Bhardwaj (#BusinessStandard), Hritik Joshi and Rahul Charas (@NavbharatTimes), Shoaib Daniyal (#Scroll), Anshu (@newslaundry ), Saurabh Sharma (@Reuters ), Jagriti Trisha (BOOM), Shivang Shukla (Mo), Neeraj Jha (@moliticsindia), and freelance journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta were also forcibly detained in #Delhi, along with Kinjal (@AltNews) in #Ahmedabad and Divya Aslesha (Scroll) in #Pune.
Covering events of public interest is not a crime. It is their job. The police's actions against the press are unacceptable.
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
Today, a landslide in the Gorkha district of Nepal blocked the Budhi Gandaki River and caused flooding downstream. Authorities have urged villagers to move to safer places. Several houses, two suspension bridges and a hydropower project were damaged but no casualties have been reported so far.
In August, writer Pranaya Rana (@inkthink) and his friends left Kathmandu at 5 am for a pilgrimage to Gosainkunda. The flood from Langtang Lirung came down the Trishuli about an hour behind them. In this piece, he writes about what it means to live in a country where disaster can arrive without warning, and where, in his words, the next time “it could be me.”: himalmag.com/nepal-flood-cli…
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
What happens when an entire generation of youth is assaulted by the police? It radicalizes them even further and creates extreme forms of distrust against the state and it's machinery. Protests change people and in turn the system.
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
Another example of increasing cascading disasters in Himalayan rivers. Budhi Gandaki in severe floods after landslide dam nr Lokpa, Nepal burst suddenly. Resulting debris mass triggered series of blockages & breaching since 04:00am 11.10.26. @CWCOfficial_FF @ndmaindia @WRD_Bihar.
Flash floods carrying mud, debris and huge boulders have struck Nepal’s Manaslu region after a dry landslide blocked the Budhi Gandaki River near Lokpa, Chumnubri-6. The river has repeatedly blocked and burst since around 04:00 this morning, 11.10.2026, threatening settlements downstream toward Jagat and Arughat. No casualties have been reported so far.
Video ©: Gurung Suna.
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
“Diversity is one thing that IITs are not able to handle, which is not their making. The faculty-student ratios have become very bad right now. India is not spending enough money on higher education. What China spends on two universities, Tsinghua and Peking University, is our entire Ministry of Education's higher education budget right now,” says @ramgopal_rao.
Watch the video to know why the former IIT Delhi director says so.
#IndiaTodayConclaveMumbai26 @sardesairajdeep
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
UPDATE. Our colleagues have been released. Thank you all for your help.
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
Now my colleague @ShoaibDaniyal, Scroll’s political editor, has been detained near CR Park — nowhere near Jantar Mantar. My colleague @sighyush was detained earlier in the day. This is unacceptable.
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
Ground Report | Journalists and Mediapersons show their Press cards as Police continue to detain them.
Follow @thequint for more updates.
#CockroachJantaParty #Protest #JantarMantar #Delhi #Politics
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
My colleague, one of India's best investigative reporters, Ayush Tiwari @sighyush has been detained by Delhi Police near ITO.
He was not even at Jantar Mantar.
He had his press card prominently displayed.
He told the police many times he was a journalist.
Despite that he was bundled into a van and taken away.
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
#ExpressSpecial | A technical glitch in Maharashtra’s draft electoral roll recorded the birth year of 2.7 lakh voters as 1900, making them appear to be aged between 101 and 150. The Election Commission of India fixed the error on October 6, more than a month after it was first flagged. Here’s what happened and why it raises questions about access to electoral roll data.
Read: indianexpress.com/article/ci…
Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar retweeted
Amazon is building one of India's largest data centres metres from people's homes near Mumbai. Residents want it gone.
Tushar Shetty bought a 21st-floor flat for the green views. Today he looks out at bare red earth, cleared for the Amazon site. "I would not have bought the house if I had known," he told us.
India is betting big on becoming the physical backbone of the AI age. Amazon, Google and Microsoft are pouring billions in, chasing Modi's ambition to host the world's data.
But the facilities are landing next to where people live. Our reporting found protests outside the Mumbai site, opposition politicians joining the fight
Even some in the industry are uneasy. "I will never set up a data centre in a residential area," one Indian data centre CEO, Sharad Agarwal, told an industry event. His company runs 14 of them.
With @VibhutiSharmas, @MunsifV. Read reut.rs/4hKJLUj
