“The question of a missing health frame continues to remain an issue where our understanding of health science is really lacking in our environmental policy and the power for evidence is set quite unreasonably high. The institutional capacity and accountability issues mean that in a federal structure with a plurality of sources and the complexity of intersectoral action no one person is really accountable, and our regulators are dealing with a 21st century problem with a 20th century institutional design” – Bhargav Krishna moderated the webinar, “From Smog to Sickness: Understanding Air Pollution in a Changing Climate”, organised by Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health – India Research Centre on 28 January 2026. Watch the full conversation here: https://youtu.be/v5MqAxvrW4U

“The questions of how we use metrics such as good and bad air days are deeply dependent on what our air quality standards are and how that figures into our air quality index. Right now, our air quality standards are substantially higher than what is globally considered acceptable by the World Health Organisation and are not necessarily fully aligned with what the evidence also tells us with respect to health harms and how they’re experienced, especially by vulnerable people in our own country, let alone the rest of the world. This report also tells us how do we measure progress, what do we need to account for with respect to variations within cities, and how do we translate that into a metric that is easily understood by people” – Bhargav Krishna spoke in the webinar, ‘Air Quality Trends in Indian Cities Since the National Clean Air Programme’, organised by Health Effects Institute on 13 January 2026. He was joined by Anumita Roychowdhury (CSE), Abinaya Sekar (HEI), and Ramya Sunder Raman (IISER). Watch the entire discussion here: https://youtu.be/ddnPL2I5WT8

Poonam Mangaraj conducted an online guest lecture on ‘How to Write a Research Paper’ for first year BTech students of Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai, on 21 January 2026. She focused on various aspects of writing, such as deciding the title, writing a crisp abstract and introduction, framing the methodology, writing the analysis, drawing conclusions, and listing out references.

Bhargav Krishna spoke on, A Hazy Status Quo: India and Air Pollution, at the webinar, ‘Beyond the Haze: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Air Pollution’ organised by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University on 3 December 2025. Watch the entire discussion here: https://youtu.be/IlyejyYuO80

Annanya Mahajan spoke on how India’s policy response to air pollution should prioritise health by targeting the most dangerous pollutants to which people are most commonly exposed, at the first edition of the Act Now Forum, organised by Gaialink, in partnership with Habitat India, on 20 December 2025. The forum is a multi-sector dialogue aiming to understand the urban, and now rural, air crisis and is designed to turn expert insights into clear, actionable direction for the public.

Sony R K co-convened a panel titled, ‘Epistemic Uncertainties and the Politics of Scientific Knowledge in Environmental Governance’, with Ranjith Kallyani (Assistant Professor, Jaypee University of Information Technology, Solan, HP) at the First STS India Network Conference “Co-Shaping of Science, Technology, and Society in India”, organised by OP Jindal Global University and STS India Network in collaboration with IIT Delhi. The panel examined how scientific knowledge in environmental governance is shaped by uncertainty, power, institutional interests, and socio-political contexts, challenging the notion of science as a neutral or singular authority in decision-making.