Gujarat marked National Forest Martyrs’ Day on Friday by handing ₹50 lakh to the family of Vikas Desai, the Vyara range forest officer killed in July while chasing down a truck loaded with stolen timber.
Bishnoi
In the Thar Desert of western Rajasthan, blackbuck graze at the edge of villages the way cattle do elsewhere. They do not run. They have learned, over five centuries, that they do not need to.
India has no single word for what happens when a community embroiders a peacock onto a shawl, paints a tiger onto a temple wall, or weaves a blackbuck into a carpet — and has been doing so for five centuries.
Clocked at 80 km/h across open grassland, the blackbuck is India’s fastest land animal. It was once nearly extinct. Now it’s running again in Chhattisgarh — after 50 years of absence.