Rishika Pardikar

Environment and climate reporter covering science, law & policy | @Article14live, @the_hindu, @thenewsminute

[Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar]

🚨Exclusive: Modi govt shut down almost 200 district weather advisory units providing crucial services to farmers after @NITIAayog misrepresented their role & sought privatisation of services. Based on internal finance ministry documents #RTI https://t.co/cmuQrpgw1n

[Vinay Kumar @bahudari]

Please excuse them, they were busy asking us why we were carrying the 🇮🇳 & singing the National Anthem without prior permission.

[Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar]

Tomorrow.

[ವಿನಯ್ ಕೂರಗಾಯಲ ಶ್ರೀನಿವಾಸ Vinay K S @vinaysreeni]

BBMP decentralised into 5 corporations. Blore Police Comissionerate also likely to split into 5.

Why then should protests remain centralised and locked in freedom park ?

Join the Round Table organised by by @horaata_protest on Mon 26 Oct.

@bengawalk @clifroz @aishwaryar23

[ವಿನಯ್ ಕೂರಗಾಯಲ ಶ್ರೀನಿವಾಸ Vinay K S @vinaysreeni]

BBMP decentralised into 5 corporations. Blore Police Comissionerate also likely to split into 5.

Why then should protests remain centralised and locked in freedom park ?

Join the Round Table organised by by @horaata_protest on Mon 26 Oct.

@bengawalk @clifroz @aishwaryar23

[Rokibuz Zaman @ZamanRokibuz_]

This is the second time this had been burnt in anti dam protest. In 2011, the same office was burnt down.

From archive of Arunachal Times. Courtesy: @tongamrina

[Heenu🌻 @Heenu_Ri]

Nah society (living in Taksin border) has repeatedly alerted the govt that Chinese troops have taken over their ancestral grazing lands. But our Displacement loving govt is blind when it comes to border security & busy building dams, imposing UAPA on indigenous people

[Bengia Ajum @Bengiaajum]

@vijaita Local journalist of Arunachal has been telling this since August. Nothing new in this report. Only thing is ITBF folk admitting in publicly. We were censored for writing about it by government of India. Delhi journos should visit ground and file report.

[Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar]

A roundtable discussion to reclaim the right to protest in Bengaluru. The underlying belief is that people should be able to protest wherever a grievance arises. The demand from the Congress government is to scrap BJP-era order restricting protests to Freedom Park

[Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar]

And faced backlash

https://t.co/mrAk0H7W0s

[Bengia Ajum @Bengiaajum]

This is how censorship works. My Instagram post about the alleged Chinese incursion in Taksing has been restricted. Everyone knows who is behind it. But how long can the truth be hidden?

#Taksing #UpperSubansiri #ArunachalPradesh

[Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar]

Local media had warned about this four months ago https://t.co/OF5Ln6MgEB

[Vijaita Singh @vijaita]

China and India in a standoff at multiple locations along Arunachal border since July, India hosted Xi Jinping from Sep 11-13 for the BRICS summit.
“In the past few-days, a situation arose where face-off happened at several locations in Arunachal and it still continues,” ITBP D-G Shatrujeet Kapur said on Thursday.
This is the first official confirmation of the scale of the continuing tensions on the north-eastern border since July this year.
Government sources told The Hindu that since late July, India and China have been engaged in a stand-off at Asaphila near Taksing in Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is said to have pitched tents at an elevation, within 6-7 kilometres of India’s perception of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) near Maja company operating base in Taksing circle of Upper Subansiri district, sources said. I ✍️

https://t.co/GQuYyEZhWC

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

"Why are French police so violent? Their job is to protect the state, not the people. Officers are instruments of state whose job is to repress, rather than manage, public dissent." https://t.co/vMBc4q3ovk

[Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar]

"To deliver the Paris commitment to keep warming well below 2°C requires global CO₂ emissions to fall by around 8% annually, starting immediately. The rate would be higher for the UK & other developed countries if the equity dimension of the Paris Agreement were taken seriously"

[Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate]

Jackdaw: a decision for last century. https://t.co/Vd3FZR7F65

A hastily drafted post following the UK Govt’s decision to approve further drilling & production at the Jackdaw gas field in the N.Sea. Please excuse typos, non-sequiturs, etc - I wanted to get the post online today.

[Surbhi Kesar @SurbhiKesar]

Want to understand the underlying economic currents for India's youth movement? Join us on the seminar happening now:

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

Students in Italy hit the streets to demand their government fund education instead of war.

[Marina Dai @itsMarinaDai]

Honestly…watching the RSS centenary celebrations and the march through the streets of Itanagar today was unsettling. We have so many issues in Arunachal Pradesh that need our leaders’ attention, yet seeing them align themselves with the RSS makes me wonder where our own Indigenous identity stands in all of this. What about our land rights, reservation, ILP, customary laws, constitutional safeguards, our languages and belief systems? As Indigenous people we need to ask these questions. Supporting a political party or ideology is a personal choice but we also have every right to question what that alignment means for our communities. Our identity should never come second to political loyalty.

[Priyank Kharge / ಪ್ರಿಯಾಂಕ್ ಖರ್ಗೆ @PriyankKharge]

My dearest Swayamsevaks of the RSS,

Hope the Dasara festivities are in full swing!

Not to be a wet blanket, but a gentle reminder, merely “informing” or telling the Home Department to “cooperate” or “make necessary arrangements” is not the same as obtaining permission.

Please submit your application in accordance with the prescribed procedure applicable to all organizations and await formal approval from the competent authorities.

I am sure you have read your own Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha Annual Report 2025–26, which states that the RSS conducted 562 route marches across Karnataka, involving 2,21,963 uniformed participants.

Now, when lakhs of you intend to march through Karnataka’s streets on single day at the same time, the Police Department has considerable preparations to make: deployment of personnel, transportation, food, traffic management, security arrangements and other logistics.

All of this requires planning, manpower and public resources.

So, please fill out the prescribed application form, provide the necessary details and await formal permission.

Happy Dasara!

[Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar]

Read this to understand strategies of successful anti-colonial movements & the 'controversial' role of violence. Sharing because systemic violence (violence by colonial powers & state violence, generally) is overlooked when portraying protestors or resistance forces as violent

[Sushant Singh @SushantSin]

"That means a heavily centralised state often passes laws with little popular agreement, making the “power of the street” one of citizens’ few viable means of forcing concessions. Protest here is regarded as a civic duty and a legitimate democratic tool."
https://t.co/WZe9rCyhCc

[TheLiverDoc™ @theliverdoc]

My dear friends, please, I hope to demand your absolute attention to this matter:

In 2018, my junior from St. John’s Medical College, Bengaluru, Dr. Randall Sequeira (middle in the pic), trekked up a steep, bauxite-rich plateau in Odisha to hold a monsoon health camp in the indigenous Kutiya Kondh village of Kutrumali.

In a piece he wrote then titled "Kutrumali’s Demons," Randall described sleeping under a dripping school roof in freezing fog, borrowing utensils from a local health worker to cook khichdi, and waking up at 6 AM to a line of tribal mothers. He wrote with heartbreak about treating malnourished toddlers with protruding bellies and visible ribs, listening to stories of stillbirths and chronic fevers, while noticing the shiny new solar lights installed by a mining conglomerate eyeing the aluminium ore beneath the villagers' feet.

Comparing his small medical team to hobbits sheltering in the night, Randall worried about the outside forces coming for that fragile village.

Randall stayed with the tribal/ adivasi community to serve them. After St. John’s and an MD in Internal Medicine from SMS Jaipur, he gave up every comfort of urban medicine to live in Kalahandi, recognizing that clinical prescriptions are meaningless when indigenous communities are stripped of their forests, water, and dignity.

On the night of October 16, Odisha police picked up Dr. Randall Sequeira and Dalit activist Laxman Naik at 11 PM from his home in Bhawanipatna. A gentle physician who has spent years trekking up hills to save tribal children is now locked in Rayagada sub-jail under frivolous but draconian charges (attempt to murder, dacoity), simply for standing with Adivasis peaceful protesting the mining of their sacred hills in Sijimali and Kutrumali.
https://t.co/PsxZZCngyV

Odisha Govt. said it will cut down forests to connect tribal villages. But it was a way to bypass green laws and fast track London based Vedanta’s, and Adani's mining plans. Local organisations estimate that around 45 villages depend on these hills and would be affected.
https://t.co/0pATUIYADm

The state has answered with repression rather than dialogue. In the last three years, at least 43 police cases have been filed and over a hundred Adivasis and Dalits, both women and men, have been incarcerated in Odisha jails. For example, from In March and april 2026, 8, 2026, to April 8, 2026, within one month, 24 people were sent to jail, 217 were made accused, and the number of “others” total 1,140. An activist who was not named in the original FIRs, but has since been implicated in about 12 cases, so that bail in one case is followed by arrest in another. This pattern of capture and releases have been used to crush rational dissent.

Dr. Randall understood that being a good doctor means understanding that prescriptions cannot compensate for the denial of land rights, that surgery cannot undo displacement and that no medical can substitute for the basic infrastructure a government has failed to provide.
https://t.co/fOC9AU3jaR

To my fellow medical fraternity, and every citizen with a conscience: a kind physician who embodies the highest ethics of our profession is being criminalized to clear the way for bauxite mining. Please do not let his voice be buried in a sub-jail.

Amplify this, demand due process, and demand the immediate release. Please sign in this form to show solidarity: https://t.co/cgLIoEXExG

If anyone can help out in this situation please reach out to Medico Friend Circle - https://t.co/OT2D2E3DuW

[Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar]

@bhatoti @sreemoytalukdar Broadly, I think cover images used by media outlets for the protests in India & France are depictions of reality. Protestors in India have been peaceful & the violence came in the form of police backlash. In France, the discontent has spilled over in various 'non-peaceful' forms

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

Students and activists protested across Indonesia over rising living costs, economic concerns and forest fires linked to land clearing for palm oil plantations.