Bhasker Tripathi

Finding a decent job was 23-year-old Shikher's only goal when he left his village in northern India for the capital two years ago, but things did not go exactly as planned.

At first, he worked in a factory making cellphone chargers for just 8,000 rupees ($96) a month. Exhausted by the 12-hour shifts, he turned to gig work as a delivery rider for an online grocery platform - still his job today.

Campaign rallies under a blazing sun, long treks to rural polling stations - as Indians prepare to vote, forecasts for extreme heat could add to the challenges of holding the world's biggest election.

With voting starting on Friday, parties and authorities are being urged to do more to keep voters, candidates and polling station staff safe following heat warnings by the nation's meteorological service for the six-week election period.

Drought is driving poor Indian women into exploitative sugarcane work in the central state of Maharashtra, with many of the migrant labourers opting to undergo unnecessary hysterectomies to work even harder, research showed on Thursday.

Years of failed monsoons, extreme heat and droughts have led residents of Beed, a district in the top sugar-producing state to leave and become day labourers on sugar plantations, said the report by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a London-based think-tank.

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi showcased the country's Green Credit Programme at COP28 in Dubai, he billed it as a new tool in the fight against climate change that "goes beyond the commercial mindset associated with carbon credits".

But as officials hone the methodology for awarding tradeable credits for green actions - initially just planting trees and water conservation - environmental campaigners say the initiative could end up profiting businesses responsible for deforestation.

When top-strength Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017, bringing a big storm surge, torrential rain and howling winds, roads, bridges and the power network were obliterated.

The U.S island territory - which was already suffering an economic recession - came to a standstill amid electricity outages, severe flooding, and food and water shortages. 

When U.S. voters head to the polls in November to decide a likely showdown between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, they will join the ranks of about two billion people voting worldwide this year.

In a record year for democracy, nations that are home to more than half the global population will have elections, including Indonesia in February, India by May and the United States and Britain later in the year.

The first-ever U.N. roadmap for cutting climate-heating emissions from the world's farming sector, unveiled at the COP28 U.N. climate summit this month, has stirred debate around how to share fairly the burden of shifting to greener ways.  

Some agricultural experts are calling for fertilisers and other agro-chemicals - whose production relies heavily on fossil fuels - to be completely phased out, while others say poorer countries will continue to need them to improve low crop yields.

On a sunny afternoon last month, two dozen people gathered at the council office in a south Indian village to protest against a new ethanol plant they say is polluting their backyard.

Over a year ago, locals were alarmed when they saw construction begin on the government-sanctioned grain distillery on a vacant plot about a kilometre (0.62 miles) away from their homes.

Two decades ago, Damera Yakamma's husband, a cotton farmer in a southern Indian village, committed suicide by consuming pesticide because of his mounting debts, leaving his widow in charge of their two acres of land.

After that, the mother of four - then in her mid-twenties - decided she did not want any more chemicals entering her home.

Indian farmer Jitendra Singh proudly holds up a rice stem on his farm of lush green paddy. "Look at the height and health of this plant - the number of florets on it is amazing," he said.

Located in the northern state of Haryana, one of India’s main rice and wheat-growing regions, Singh's 80-acre (32.4-hectare) farm is part of a gradual shift in how Indians cultivate their staple crops, from a model that is fertiliser and water-intensive to more natural, climate-friendly ways.