The larger picture has started becoming abundantly clear about just what is happening in the Indian subcontinent. This is a systemic problem we are facing. This is a flaw in thought—about various aspects of governance and development in India and the subcontinent as a whole, and not a one-off occurrence,” environmental writer, explorer, photographer and artist Arati Kumar-Rao tells us, discussing the interconnectedness of the landscapes she writes about in her first book Marginlands: Indian Landscapes on the Brink (Pan Macmillan India, Rs 699). 

In the course of documenting the densely populated Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin with its large hydro power dams and barrages for example, she relates how while working in Arunachal Pradesh, she found she had to visit Assam to pursue a related thread and then that led her across the border into Bangladesh. “I was making my way through the landscapes and following one story, which was leading to another and then another, and trying to weave a fabric. It was clear that what was happening in one landscape had repercussions in another.”