Reetika Revathy Subramanian

In this In Plainspeak interview with TARSHI, I discuss how climate change intersects with sexuality, kinship, early marriage, livelihood, and gender inequality, drawing on years of research and experience.

Co-authored a guide with the Indian Institute for Human Settlements through the Climate Change Local Adaptation Pathways project. The guide is designed to help people working in development organisations, think tanks, and the media understand and communicate the often-overlooked links between climate change and internal migration in India.

Across South Asia, droughts, floods and displacement are fuelling marriages of adolescent girls as a survival tactic. Based on insights from the 'Climate Brides' project, I write about these linkages.

Across South Asia, early and forced marriage is taking on new dimensions. While often explained through the lens of tradition or poverty, the practice is increasingly shaped by a force largely absent from most climate adaptation frameworks: the accelerating environmental crisis.

In this peer-reviewed journal article published in Gender & Development, I ask: What does it mean to forge temporary friendships and moments of freedom in a job marked by backbreaking labour, open canefields, constant travel, and no privacy?

In this peer-reviewed research article published in Climate and Development journal, I draw on the local practice of Gate-Cane weddings in Marathwada region of western India, and situate it within the context of climate change, capitalist agriculture, and gendered labour relations.

I'm the creator and host of the Climate Brides podcast, which brings to you a series of conversations on early and forced marriages, and the climate crisis in South Asia. The project is supported by the University of Cambridge Public Engagement Starter Fund.

In collaboration with illustrator Maitri Dore, I undertook research and wrote the text for 'Raindrop in the Drought: Godavari Dange'. The multilingual comic book (English, Marathi, Hindi, Telugu and Urdu) was published by Goethe-Institut Indonesian under its 'Movements and Moments: Feminists Generation' project in 2021.

In this ethnographic research paper, I document the ways in which Dawoodi Bohra women use the rhetoric of 'modernity'—by reinventing history, renegotiating patriarchies, reimagining the other and incorporating biomedicine—to preserve and perpetuate the contested tradition of Female Khatna or Female Genital Cutting.

An article based on my research paper, 'Gate-Cane: (Un)tying the knots between climate, cane, and early marriage in rural India' published in Climate and Development journal on quick-fix weddings planned in drought-hit Marathwada region of western India.

I have co-authored a chapter on the work and living conditions of Odia migrant workers in India's textile capital, Surat City. The chapter is titled 'From Fibre to Fabric: Everyday Confrontations with Disaster, Danger & Death by Odia Loom Workers in Surat City' (p.79).

This ethnographic study documents how Dawoodi Bohras talk about female genital cutting and their attitude towards public debates in support of or against it. The research was supported by Mumkin LLP and Grand Challenges Canada.

Using key insights from our comic book 'Raindrop in the Drought', I co-authored this article with Maitri Dore on gender, climate, and sustainable agricultural practices in rural India.

Every year, in drought-affected Dharur taluka of Marathwada, apple sellers, cane cutters, students, and chemists, take to an IPL-styled cricket tournament--Dharur Premier League--to find a momentary escape from disaster and distress. I spoke to some of the players and franchise owners for this story.

An excerpt from our chapter 'From Fibre to Fabric: Everyday Confrontations with Disaster, Danger and Death by Odia Loom Workers in Surat City' published in the sixth edition of the India Exclusion Report 2020.