A River Runs Again

Starred review from June 22, 2015
In this exemplary work, journalist Subramanian examines how India is responding to the environmental pressures linked to its growing population, with finite resources and unique cultural circumstances. The country, she says, is a “staging ground for an experiment in human survival” since it is “only a matter of time before even the most comfortable of countries will face similar circumstances.” Subramanian organizes the book around the Pancha Mahabhuta (five great elements) of Hindu mythology—earth, water, fire, air, and ether—and uses this conceit to investigate environmental issues, such as vanishing water resources and the extinction threat to vultures. The sections poignantly incorporate cultural issues as well. For example, the chapter on “Fire” explores the environmental impact and health risks of the carbon-fueled stoves used by two-thirds of the population in India. Subramanian’s writing is thoughtful and often lyrical as she balances current science with narrative journalism from her travels, switching modes to great effect. While reporting on environmental issues can sometimes overwhelm or burden the reader with guilt, Subramanian thwarts this risk by providing refreshing glimpses of individuals and organizations working against the problems India faces. Her work is engaging, informative, and eminently readable. Agent: Elise Capron, Sandra Dijkstra Agency.

June 1, 2015
Journalist Subramanian examines a handful of environmental woes besetting India, along with hopeful remedies. This is investigative journalism as story: fact-filled but optimistic, rueful and inviting. The author writes with warm intelligence, and she challenges readers. She sounds five particular environmental issues-though, inevitably, they also reach into cultural and economic concerns-each a grave, ruinous path. She categorizes the five issues as elements: earth (agriculture, toxicity), water (purity), fire (pollution, disease), air (extinction, chemistry), and ether (reproductive health, sexual predation). She devotes a chapter to each, providing an overview of the problem: how the green revolution has bottomed out, soil has been destroyed by herbicides and fungicides, farmers are indentured servants to fertilizer (which has become "like crack for crops"), and how seed industries are now patented and pricey. The author also looks at industrial, residential, and sacrificial effluents that have contaminated the water supply; the destruction of wetlands; the overuse of groundwater; cookstove pollution; deforestation; chronic respiratory and heart diseases; the looming extinction of vultures (uncharismatic, yes, but "a natural and efficient disposal system"); the explosion of vicious, carrion-eating dogs; and the unwanted children and sexual violence that have become increasingly commonplace. In each chapter, as well, Subramanian offers specific antidotes as anecdotes, narrating in a measured, conversational, welcoming voice. She examines the increase in soil complexity through tilth development; the return of natural predators for pests; the brilliance and effectiveness of small-scale irrigation, a return toward the great Indian waterworks; efficient cookstoves; the banning of toxic chemicals; and grass-roots reproductive education and "criminalizing sexual harassment, voyeurism, and stalking-acts still widely dismissed as 'Eve-teasing' in India." Each of the stories is comprehensive while nimble, as well as provocative. Promising prescriptions to five of India's baneful environmental cases-right thinking and accusatory in all the right places.

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August 1, 2015

After traveling extensively throughout India, investigative journalist Subramanian (New York Times; Nature; Smithsonian) presents five stories of ordinary people and microenterprises seeking to sustain and preserve India's natural world. She gracefully weaves into each story one of the five elements: earth, water, fire, ether, and air. In Punjab, the breadbasket of India, farmers are using organic methods to raise crops (earth) after the use of pesticides from earlier decades. With guidance from the "Rainman of Rajasthan," villagers in central India are building their own small dams to better control irrigation and conserve water. The use of biomass--wood and dung--for cooking, which causes extreme health problems, is driving designers to innovate a smokeless stove (fire). In one of India's most impoverished states, a bold young woman teaches adolescents the fundamentals of sexual health which eventually will lead to smaller families (ether). The most compelling story centers on the cause of vulture mortality (air), resulting in unforeseen adverse effects with efforts to bring them back from extinction. VERDICT By embedding numerous facts and data about India's inhabitants into her engrossing narrative, Subramanian has created a work that belongs in all environmental collections.--Eva Lautemann, formerly with Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2015
American journalist Subramanian, daughter of an Indian immigrant who maintains deep ties to her father's homeland, crafted her first book around stories of India's land and the people working to sustain it, basing its five sections on the elements of earth, water, fire, air, and ether. Subramanian traveled around the country, conducting hundreds of interviews in her quest to understand everything from traditional dam building to the complexity of designing a cook stove that meets economic, environmental, and cultural needs. Her curiosity is sharp, leading her to investigate the rescue of the South Asian vulture population, organic farming, and sexual-health education for adolescents. The result of her immersion in the efforts of so many dedicated individuals is a hopeful narrative about good people doing hard work to improve the lives of others. Subramanian's strong journalist ethic shines through in the penetrating questions she poses and the baleful eye she casts on those who would shrug off her perceptive observations about the clash between traditional practices and modern life. A significant and valuable inquiry into twenty-first-century India.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)