The Subverse

Susan Mathews interviews Catarina de Albuquerque, Chief Executive Officer of Sanitation and Water for All (SWA), a global partnership which has positioned SWA as a vital contributor to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 6. In a wide-ranging conversation, they speak of what human rights as a discourse brings to water and sanitation, the realities on the ground, and the backdrop in which the General Assembly recognised not only water as a right, but sanitation also in 2010. Together, they are vital for reducing the global burden of disease and improving the health, education, and economic productivity of populations. Susan and Catarina also discuss the need to link the right to water with water injustices, particularly the politics of water governance and equity. If not connected to social movements, the right to water risks being an empty signifier. Commercialisation, privatisation, and the commodification of water have resulted in a situation in which those who can pay for water have it readily, leaving many without affordable, or accessible water sources. We spoke at length about inequalities, with her outlining issues around access to water and how gender, caste, class, and disability determine access to water . Women often suffer the most from water scarcity, given that the responsibility of collecting water, and managing this scarce resource to meet diverse household needs rests with them. We also touched upon how the existing legal arena and human rights discourse may not allow for discussions around existential questions, focusing our gaze on narrow, human frames. Catarina de Albuquerque was previously the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on safe drinking water and sanitation, appointed by the Human Rights Council in 2008. In 2010, she played a pivotal role in the recognition of water and sanitation as human rights by the United Nations General Assembly. Her work also helped ensure that the rights to water and sanitation were incorporated into the language of the Sustainable Development Goals. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

From Asia's mountain core flows ten great rivers that run through 16 countries, serving a fifth of humanity. The struggle for water in modern history is a global story, but nowhere has the search for water shaped or sustained as much human life as in India and China. In this episode, Susan Mathews speaks to Sunil Amrith, historian and writer, about his book Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons have Shaped South Asia's History published in 2018. Unruly Waters tells the story of how the schemes of empire-builders, the visions of freedom fighters, the designs of engineers, and the cumulative actions of hundreds of millions of people across generations, have transformed Asia's waters over the past 200 years. In the conversation, we also cover some of our parched histories, and the histories of the empire. The catastrophes of the late nineteenth century left many people—Indian economists, British administrators, water engineers and humanitarian reformers—with an acute anxiety about climate and water. Climate was at the heart of a new ecology of fear', something we also face in our contemporary contexts: old and new anxieties and fears. How does reading these parched histories equip us now, or can they? In this wide-ranging conversation, we also speak about hydro-colonialism, the many names of rain, signs of hope, and taking from Zadie Smith, how there is a sense of loss that climate change brings with it. We also examine our relationship with animals, trees, our kinship, our duty of care, elements now animating environmental history, and his own scholarship. Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University. His books include Crossing the Bay of Bengal (2013), and Unruly Waters (2018). He is a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, and has recently been awarded the A.H. Heineken Prize for History (2022). The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

In this episode, Susan talks to Sharanya Manivannan, who writes and illustrates fiction, poetry, and non-fiction for children and adults. Sharanya's two most recent books are the graphic novel, Incantations Over Water, and the picture book, Mermaids In The Moonlight. Sharanya grew up in Sri Lanka and Malaysia and currently lives in India. Ila is the mermaid protagonist in her two recent books, and the stories are set in Mattakalappu (Batticaloa), on the northeastern shore of Sri Lanka. We are introduced to a lagoon teeming with magic. For those who live there, the idea of fish-tailed women is not out of the realm of possibility. And yet, while these mermaids appear as motifs throughout the lagoon, their stories have been erased. In these books, Sharanya breathes new life into these tales and other accounts of mermaids from all over the world, challenging the often eurocentric focus of these myths. Ila's journey extends through the war on the island and the silence of those years, and the tsunami of 2004, when "the water stripped back like linen to reveal its bed and afterwards, beings that would resist record lay stranded briefly." It is the capaciousness of water, and the hybrid and fluid body of the mermaid that really offers us a beautiful escape in these books. It gives us a whole new world, a whole subverse for us to partake in. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

In this episode, Susan Mathews talks to Nandini Oza about archiving oral histories around the struggles against dam projects in the Narmada River valley. The former President of Oral History Association of India (2020-22), Nandini is a researcher, writer, chronicler, and an archivist. For over a decade, she was an activist with the powerful people's movement, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). In 2004, Nandini began recording the oral histories of prominent leaders and activists of the NBA, both local and from outside the Narmada valley and of impacted women and men belonging to adivasi, farming, and other natural resource-dependent communities. The Narmada is India's longest west-flowing river, and it makes its way through the three western states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. The Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is the terminal dam on the river in Gujarat, and is part of the Narmada Valley Development Plan (NVDP) which includes 30 big, 135 medium, and 3000 small dams on the river and its tributaries. For Nandini, oral history is people's history—the history of the marginalised and exploited, narrated in their own voice, which is often actively suppressed by mainstream history. Even in people's movements, when history is written, it often focuses on the key issues, programs and strategies, or on known faces, and the people who form the backbone of the resistance and their battles do not find a place of prominence. These interviews also help us understand how turning a free-flowing river into a reservoir of stagnant water by building a mega dam destroys the very way of life of people who belong to one of the oldest river valley civilizations. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

In this episode, Susan talks about the molecule of life, the matrix of the world, the cosmic juice - water. As Barbara Kingsolver writes, "It is the gold standard of biological currency." She says, "Water is life, it's the briny broth of our origins, the pounding circulatory system of the world, a precarious molecular edge on which we survive. It makes up two-thirds of our bodies, just like the map of the world; our vital fluids are saline, like the ocean. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." This episode is part tribute, part meditation on the journey of water from the stars to the tide pool. John Steinbeck wrote in The Log from the Sea of Cortez about how all things are one thing and that one thing is all things — plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. He advises us to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again. For the remainder of this podcast season, we will cover various dimensions of water — from history to folklore, to the impact of big dams, to the challenges of providing drinking water and sanitation, and more. This episode is also an introduction to the remainder of the season and how we can speak of our current crises in view of the space of water as an urgent territory of engagement. From the stars to the tide pool is a tale of magic, of diving into a wreck, of embracing differences, articulating agency and accounting for our water wounds. It is a journey from the outer to the inner space of water, to coming to terms with our fishy beginnings, and our watery selves and learning to swim towards unknowable futures. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

In this episode, Susan speaks with Kumi Naidoo, a seasoned activist in South Africa during its struggle against apartheid who is recognized internationally as a forceful advocate for human rights, gender equity, economic justice and environmental justice. He headed Civicus, Greenpeace and Amnesty International and continues to serve in an honorary capacity as Global Ambassador for the Pan-African civil society movement, Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity. Kumi is presently a fellow at the Robert Bosch academy in Berlin, Germany. Susan and Kumi speak about art and activism, the aftermath of COP26, and how close we are to the cliff on climate change action. Art is a way of making visible that which is invisible or maybe even rendered invisible and activism can learn much from art. We need to move beyond the limitations and entanglements of political activism as it stands now, and the hierarchies and intrinsic hegemonies built into our institutions and our norms. Art, fiction activate our imaginations and are important forms through which we can imagine other forms of human existence and other futures. Kumi also speaks compellingly of the need for youth to take the reins of leadership and not wait for it to be handed over, along with continuing to celebrate life, to love, laugh, embrace joy, to go down fighting, see these fights as marathons not as sprints and ensure accountability and justice in the process. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

In this episode of The Subverse, we talk about soundscape ecology, the study of sounds and bioacoustics, which is the study of species vocalisations. Susan talks to Pooja Choksi, a PhD candidate at Columbia University and co-founder of Project Dhvani about her fascinating research on ecological restoration in the central Indian landscape, using acoustics as a tool. Pooja's primary research focuses on understanding the impact of ecological restoration on vegetation, people, and wildlife. She uses non-invasive audio recorders in the dry tropical forests of central India to study how species vocalise and how acoustic activity differs as a function of restoration and management. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

In this episode, Susan speaks with Jisha Menon whose book 'Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in Urban India' was recently published by Northwestern University Press in October 2021. Jisha is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies and, by courtesy, of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. With a focus on performance studies, this book turns to artworks, performances, and aesthetics to examine the aspirations and anxieties generated in the wake of liberalization in India. Taking into consideration various works of art — paintings, installations, photography, films, theatre, live performances, visual art, etc —Brutal Beauty argues that neoliberalism exceeds its descriptors as an economic, social, and political phenomenon. The book explores a range of subjects from the aspirations of urban youth using the call center industry as a point of departure, to the dramatic shifts in discourses around representations of same-sex desire and treating narcissism not just as self-absorption but as a libidinal intervention in highly organized and rationalized environments. It also explores property and development, displaying the urban panics that shape spatial struggles around home and belonging. What is clear from this excellent book, and which both Susan and Jisha speak about in this episode is that the artists discussed in this book exist in a dialectical relationship of receptivity and responsibility to the urban environments from which they emerge, suggesting an inextricable connection between arts and social worlds. Artists are affected by urban forces, and this manifests in their artworks that are likewise open and receptive to the world that shapes them into being. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

In this episode, Susan speaks to Uttara Narayan, who explores the governance of the clean energy transition at the World Resources Institute, Chennai, India. Her focus is on expanding the interpretation of a just energy transition to include broader consequences of exclusion and injustice and ways to minimize them in an equitable manner. Uttara's work involves the use of interdisciplinary approaches to address challenges at the intersection of environment, social justice, and development. We discuss larger concerns about climate discourse and the fixation on numerical targets, which swamp all other considerations and often ignore concerns around land, livelihoods, biodiversity, and culture. These issues are often viewed as inconvenient distractions in the movement towards a higher-order climate goal. Uttara speaks in her personal capacity and her views do not necessarily reflect those of the World Resources Institute. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

We live in a time of extreme weather events and after a sobering sixth assessment report was recently published by the IPCC on the physical science basis of climate change, the question of what is going to fuel the future has never been more urgent. The evolution of energy has changed both human and natural history in significant ways and yet our future is not preordained and there is great potential to redefine society's relationship with energy. In this episode Susan speaks to Ketan Joshi, a prolific writer, analyst, and communications consultant whose focus is on clean energy and climate change. Ketan has previously worked in climate and energy for private companies and government agencies, and now writes about the front lines of climate and energy battles around the world. Ketan is based in Oslo and he is also the author of Windfall: Unlocking a fossil free future, which was published in September 2020. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark 'n' Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.