Shashank Saksena

With most of the private hospital chains going in the hands of private equity - Indians should be worried about the future of healthcare. These govt funded insurance schemes are not an alternative to a robust govt hospital infrastructure. We are doing the healthcare wrong.

Now even branded rice is failing quality tests! India Gate Basmati Rice has pesticides more than 2.5 times than the prescribed limit. Hum kare toh kare kya khaye toh khaye kya?

The bigger concern is that forest department has floated a tender for the creation of theme-based parks in the central ridge, over 40,000 sq metres of the forest land which would destroy the last lungs of the city. x.com/delhitreessos/…

Doug Tompkins co-founded The North Face in 1966. He sold his share a few years later for $50,000. The real money came later, from a clothing brand called Esprit that he built with his first wife. He walked away from fashion in his forties and spent the rest of his life buying up wild land in South America and giving it away as national parks. He died in 2015. His kayak flipped on a freezing Chilean lake while he was paddling with friends, including Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia (the clothing company). Doug spent almost two hours in near-freezing water before he was pulled out. The hypothermia killed him. He was 72. The 800,000 hectares everyone keeps posting (about 2 million acres) is just the land Doug and his wife personally handed over. Kris took over after he died. She had been the CEO of Patagonia, the same clothing brand Yvon founded, named after the very region the couple was busy protecting. In 2018 Kris handed a million acres of their own land to the government of Chile. It is still the biggest land gift any private group has ever made to a country. Chile thanked them by upgrading nine million more acres of nearby state land to national park status. Add it all up and you get about 15 million acres now protected across Chile and Argentina. More land than all of Switzerland. Thirteen new national parks have been created, with several more expanded. A 1,700-mile road called the "Route of Parks" connects them, running from the middle of Chile down to the bottom tip of South America. More than 90% of Chile's protected land is now in Patagonia. Buying the land was just step one. They also brought in biologists to put the missing animals back. Jaguars are back in Argentina's wetlands after 70 years gone. So are giant otters, small native deer, and Andean condors (the huge South American vultures with wingspans up to 10 feet). The latest piece is being finalized this spring. Chile is about to declare Cape Froward, at the very southern tip of the continent, the country's 47th national park. The land came from another 314,000 acres (about the size of Grand Teton) that Kris's foundation transferred to the Chilean government in late 2025. Doug got the project off the ground. Kris closed the biggest pieces after he was gone. More than three decades of work, four hundred million dollars of their own money, and roughly 15 million acres now protected as national parkland.

Bengaluru's green cover has fallen from 78% to 6%, its natural cooling systems are gone, and the city is baking. #KarnatakaNews #Bengaluru deccanherald.com/india/karnatak…

His name was Sushil Gulati. In 2000 he saw a police officer molesting his neighbour’s wife in Rajouri Garden Delhi. He intervened. He stopped it. The officer was suspended. Three months later a woman appeared near a Delhi hospital claiming she had been gang raped in a moving car. She named Sushil Gulati. It was a complete fabrication. The suspended officer had planned the whole thing with a lawyer and a sub inspector. They paid a woman to lie. They planted fake DNA evidence. They put blood in Gulati’s car. Gulati was arrested. Beaten in police custody. Tortured. The Crime Branch took over. The woman confessed. DNA cleared Gulati. He was discharged in 2001. But the case against the conspirators dragged 26 years. Gulati attended court over 20 times waiting to testify. Every time the defence asked for an adjournment. He died in 2014 still waiting. On April 4 2026 the Delhi High Court finally upheld conviction of the lawyer and the sub inspector. The judge wrote this. Sushil Gulati never got justice during his lifetime. His family received only Rs 3 lakh as compensation. He stopped a crime. The system destroyed him for it. (The Image is AI generated for reference only)

🚨BREAKING: I launched an investigation into Lululemon over the potential presence of toxic "forever chemicals" in activewear.

Why is nobody talking about it? 😱 Kishangarh - ‘The Marble City of India’ is silently facing a tragedy for decades that remains ignored till date The chemicals & toxics released by the marble industry is making people sick & land barren for generations But on official records — Sab Changa Si The Govt has even turned a marble dumping yard into a tourist destination, leading to spread of hazardous diseases like asthma, silicosis, etc 🤦

"Genetically Modified Mayo: Hellmann's 'Real' Mayonnaise now requires a bioengineered label on its jars." "Less than 2% of each jar is egg...98% is chemicals, oils, corn starch, EDTA & thickened with gums.

This is so bloody criminal & immoral ! Feeding on the vulnerability of cancer patients. Government needs to step in ASAP & make sure this does not happen. Exemplary punishment needed !

The Hindon River, an important tributary of the Yamuna, is effectively dead—a stark reflection of systemic failure. Stretching across 400 km of pollution, entangled in legal battles at the NGT, and leaving villages grappling with disease, its story is one of deep ecological and social distress. My latest journey, tracing the river from the Shivaliks to its confluence with the Yamuna, is now live on Eco N Energy Talk. Please watch and share—this is not just a story of a river, but of our collective survival. 🌏💧 youtu.be/0WaM2xqAGRY #SaveHindon #EnvironmentJustice"

"Bad news for hot chocolate lovers...Cadbury's Hot Cocoa contains no chocolate. Their 3.5% label is cut with so much Ammonia, it can't legally qualify as real chocolate." "One of its ingredients is E471"...a legal food additive linked to 48% increased cancer.

Absolutely NOT surprised. A city of 2.4 million residents and ~1 million floating population has just 13 km of its own metro and 150 CNG buses with insignificant investment in active mobility and near to zero transit expansion in last decade. Gurgaon is only liveable inside its gated housing societies.

So Indian chocolates is essentially made of sugar, milk solids (not milk) & vanaspati while Australian chocolates has milk, cocoa butter, chocolate base. Price is almost comparable per gram and Australia has three times the production cost. Difference is food safety standard.

Pune flooding should be studied as a masterclass in destroying a hill city’s natural hydrology. A city sitting ~560m above sea level shouldn’t flood, unless you obliterate its rivers, hills, and drainage for real estate. The real estate lobby has systematically destroyed Pune, once known as the Oxford of the East and even considered a potential capital of India before Delhi.

The world lost 12m ha of rainforest recently with your help, maybe you could help US with that Nestle?

Chanchal did not die in isolation. She was painted for a PR stunt after years of forced rides, a grotesque reminder of how normalised cruelty against elephants has become. This is not just about one death. It is about a system that has failed. India’s wild elephant population has declined by nearly 25% since 2017 (from ~30,000 to ~22,446). At the same time, over 200 elephants have been killed by trains in the last decade, as highways, mining, and unchecked urbanisation continue to fragment elephant corridors and push them into conflict zones. And yet, Project Elephant, created to protect them in 1992, has been steadily weakened. Funding remained at just ₹30–35 crore annually, with only ₹16.36 crore spent in 2022–23. Its eventual merger with Project Tiger has further diluted focus and accountability. Meanwhile, captive elephants like Chanchal continue to be exploited for tourism, festivals, and PR spectacles in violation of basic welfare norms. Chanchal’s death must force urgent course correction: stronger enforcement, real funding, and a clear end to the everyday cruelty we have chosen to ignore. @byadavbjp @moefcc

In Delhi, 55% of Groundwater Samples Not Fit for Drinking; Jal Board Ineffective: CAG Report

In 2003, a German film crew followed a nomadic family in Mongolia's Gobi Desert. The film, The Story of the Weeping Camel, was nominated for an Oscar. A mother camel had rejected her newborn after a brutal two-day labour. Without her milk, the calf would die. The family knew one option. They sent their two young sons on a journey across the desert to find a musician who could perform a ritual called Hoos, a chanting ceremony passed down for centuries specifically for this moment. The musician came. The ritual was performed. The mother camel wept real tears and turned to her calf for the first time. The film crew had gone to document a way of life. They had no idea they would capture that. UNESCO added the Hoos ritual to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2015, alongside flamenco, the Mediterranean diet, and the art of Neapolitan pizza making.