Can Bureaucracies Be Sustainability Innovators?

How India’s Coal-Dependent Government Has Harnessed Its Power to Build Better and Cleaner

Bureaucracies are often thought of as stiflers of innovation and growth. But the Indian government, one of the biggest bureaucracies in the world, has made some surprising gains in the fight against climate change. In November of last year, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed India to net-zero emissions by 2070. But the country, and its energy bureaucracy, which was built around carbon-emitting energy, already has made large-scale advances toward sustainability.

How did India do it, and how might the country’s entrenched …

My Story

My story
is the story
of a hoe wearing thin
of a factory becoming a ruin
of a road falling out of repair

my story
is the story
of stone
turning …

Mayor Garcetti, Delhi Is Waiting to Transform You—And the Future of L.A. | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Mayor Garcetti, Delhi Is Waiting to Transform You—And the Future of L.A.

If You Become Ambassador to India, Here’s What You Need to Know About My Hometown

Namaste Garcetti-ji,

The rumor that you, the mayor of my adopted hometown, Los Angeles, will be President Biden’s next ambassador to my native country, India, is picking up steam. And so …

A Letter From India, Where the World Is Collapsing | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

A Letter From India, Where the World Is Collapsing

The Official Count of Cases and Deaths Doesn’t Reflect the Full Tragedy Unfolding Here

Every morning, I wake up in my home in a middle-class locality in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, and heave a sigh of relief. I do not have temperature; …

Auto Draft | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Dispatch From India’s Farmers Protest

The Ongoing Protests Have Become the Longest Stand-off in the Country Since India Achieved Independence

For more than four months now, about 200,000 men, women, and the elderly have been camping on the roads leading to Delhi, barricaded from the nation’s capital by concrete walls, …

My Adolescence in an Attempted Utopia | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

My Adolescence in an Attempted Utopia

Coming of Age Amid Adults Questing for Self Actualization at South India’s Theosophical Society Headquarters

When I turned 14, I made two discoveries.

First, I learned that I would never inherit the smooth drape of my grandmother’s skin. Like my father, I would battle hillocks …