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It is so easy to get derailed with the immaculately constructed lives of digital creators and influencers every time we browse Instagram or TikTok. It seems like their lives are a continuous photoshoot- seamless, glamorous, and perpetually "on point", picture-perfect! But here's the harsh reality- behind all the super-filtered photos and videos that go viral on every corner of the internet, there is a mental health crisis far from anything we would describe as glamorous. It's high time we finally change the subject to discuss something that falls under the radar of many: mental health issues among digital creators, especially in India, whose influencer industry is booming more rapidly than a viral meme can spread.

Yes, influencers get to experience the "dream" life- having access to freebies, sponsorships, and even thrilling partnerships with top brands. But as influence expands, pressure intensifies. As and when the need for genuine content rises, so does the challenge of remaining true to themselves while at the same time being able to cash in on their fame.

A very recent research highlighted that 80% of Indian influencers care more about remaining true and authentic to their online followers.

But have you ever stopped to consider what happens when the pressure to get sponsorship deals or create the required revenue begins undermining the very idea of authenticity? As per the findings of the same research, approximately 75% of influencers feel extremely under pressure to make compromises on deals that they are not alright with and in doing so compromise their authenticity. Behind all the glitz, influencers usually work for 6-8 hours a day creating content, creating post strategies and keeping themselves updated about the new trends. This relentless grind leaves no space for anyone or anything else.

It shouldn't surprise you that 60% of influencers say that they experience depression or anxiety due to constant work pressure. They are always living in fear of becoming outdated or losing followers and finding themselves in a world where every post is judged, the emotional impact is real. Even as the Indian influencer space is witnessing an explosion in growth- a 25% growth expected from 2023-2028, the real difficulty of converting fame into a viable line of income is not far behind. Statistics indicate that a mere 30% of influencers can have a steady income. This makes it all the more imperative for influencers to diversify their lines of income, beyond merely content creation modes and adopting business acumen. The Dark Side of Digital Stardom: Burnout and Mental Strain  Let's be real- the "dream job" of being an influencer is not as picture-perfect as it seems to you. 

This side of the globe is not just about fan gifts, collaborations and endorsements.

There is always pressure to remain relevant.

Each day you have the constant compulsion of having to produce new, interesting content and this can be like going on a hamster wheel. In addition, creators are supposed to follow trends and create them- which is extremely draining

A shocking report by the Directorate of Education (DoE) has revealed that nearly 70% of Delhi government students enrolled under the NIOS Project failed the Class 10 examinations over the past four years. The project was initially welcomed as a second chance for students who failed Classes 9 or 10. However, it is now facing heavy criticism for poor execution and a lack of accountability.

A Scheme Meant for Dropout Recovery Falls Short

Launched by the Delhi government to help students reappear for their Class 10 exams through the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), the initiative aimed to reduce school dropout rates. However, official data accessed through an RTI reveals an alarming failure trend, signalling deeper cracks in what was once praised as Delhi’s “inclusive education model”.

In 2024, of the 7,794 students who turned up to take the Class 10 exam under the NIOS project, only 37% (2,842 students) passed. The enrolment figures always stayed between 10,000 and 29,000 a year but the overall pass percentage has been around 30 percent over the years despite this being an indication of inefficiencies in the system.

Why Are Students Failing?

Many government school teachers in Delhi have attributed the failure and most of them attributed the failure of the project to lack of coordination and mentorship.

• Weak parent-teacher communication: The parents of registered students are seldom informed of the attendance or progress.
• Few checks: students receive little academic monitoring or individual guidance..
• Poor attendance: There is low involvement of students, as most of them are not followed up regularly and lack support nets after admission.

These structural flaws have turned a good idea into another administrative trifle and put students at a loss without encouragement.

Costs Beyond Performance

Based on the existing system, registration charge of five NIOS subjects is 500 with an extra 200 per subject, 120 per practical subject and 230 per credit transfer. Also, the price is considered affordable, but students with low incomes will not be able to afford it, particularly when the system does not offer a lot of academic support. 

A Greater Crisis in the Delhi Education Model

The results contribute to the current backlash against the model of education in Delhi, which many politicians and analysts now criticize as all show and no substance Some reports also indicate that the level of learning and literacy in government schools is still way below standards despite such enormous investments. By 202324, even more than one lakh Class 9 and fifty thousand Class 11 students failed in government schools. This also revealed how academic reforms have not been able to produce meaningful learning outcomes.

What Do Experts Say?

Education analysts say that the Delhi model of reform should be rebooted- a reduction in emphasis on marketing slogans and the increase in student-teacher contact, teacher mentorship, teacher responsibility.

The 70% failure rate of the NIOS project is a huge reminder that the process of reforming education is not merely a question of access, it is a question of continuous quality and direction. These management loopholes, unless filled by the policymakers of Delhi, will continue to be a mere political sentence rather than an actual situation in the city of Delhi, which promises a fair and global education system.  

Presence of microplastics in the Bhoj wetland, which is a Ramsar site and the major source of drinking water of Bhopal, is a water security concern.

During the research, Surya Singh and co-workers at the Indian Council of Medical Research–National Institute for Research in Environmental Health (ICMR–NIREH), Bhopal, obtained surface water samples. They tested them to look for plastic pieces of sizes larger than roughly 300 micrometres using the Attenuated Total Reflectance–Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR–FTIR) technique. They detected levels of 2.4 pieces per litre in the upper lake and 6.6 pieces per litre in the lower lake.

To put that into perspective, the data indicates that the microplastic concentrations in Bhoj wetland are identical to or even greater than the most polluted sections of the Ganga river, where they have been between approximately 100 and more than 1,000 pieces per cubic metre or per 1,000 litres in certain areas. As a comparison, European fresh water lakes like Balaton lake have very low counts, usually below 10 particles per cubic metre or 1,000 litres, further indicating that the pollution in the Bhoj wetland is far higher than European systems in general and compares with India's worst-affected waters.

Singh warned that the numbers were most likely lower than the actual contamination level because the detection method, ATR–FTIR spectroscopy, has a detection limit of around 300 micrometres. According to her, if they employed more sophisticated machinery like Pyr GC-MS, µFTIR, or µRaman spectroscopy, they would have been able to detect higher concentrations, and the result would most likely display increased concentrations of microplastics. The research was released in February this year in the journal AQUA — Water Infrastructure, Ecosystems and Society.

On 7 September, a couple of hundred fishermen, majority of whom were tribals, organized a bike rally against a proposed floating solar power plant on the Panchet dam.  The fishers staged a demo, shouting slogans like "DVC Murdabaad" (down with DVC), "DVC hosiayar" (beware), and "solar project bandh karo" (scrap the solar project).

DVC is short for Damodar Valley Corporation, a public sector undertaking that owns and operates the Panchet dam, on which solar power projects of 105 MW capacity floating power have already been tendered for development. The same or even bigger capacity is pending through the tender process.

Fishermen who have been dependent on the waters of the dam for livelihood claim that almost 1,500 families would not just lose their livelihood but also their main source of cheap nutrition, all because of the first phase of the project. They have requested a public meeting at Panchet on October 15, demanding the cancellation of the project.

"About 1,500 families of three panchayats in the Nituria block—Sarabari, Raibandh, and Guniara—live on fishing from the reservoir. Solar power project will make fishing impossible," opined Rajen Tudu, convenor of the southern West Bengal chapter of Prakriti Bachao O Adibasi Bachao Mancha (platform to save nature and tribal people).

Tudu, a leader of BJMPM and a tribal organisation with significant power, told Mongabay India that the project would also negatively impact boatmen and weavers of fishing nets, ultimately impacting nearly 2,500 families.

Apart from Tudu's organisation, the Damodar Valley Bastuhara Sangram Samiti (committee to fight for the displaced), Bastuhara Matsyajibi Saagram Samiti (committee to fight for the displaced fishers), and Jami Raksha Committee (land protection committee) together are spearheading the protests.

The DVC has jurisdiction over a stretch of about 24,235 square kilometres in Jharkhand and West Bengal, its assets being the multipurpose dams at Tilaiya, Konar, Maithon, and Panchet.

The agitators say that the DVC authorities had assured them alternative livelihood in the form of cage fishing. However, they are not convinced and say the suggestions are vague.

Mongabay India sent an email to the Chief Public Relations Officer of DVC inquiring about the company's engagement, if any, with the agitators and how they replied to allegations made by the fisherfolk and did not receive a response.

Sukhram Hansda, a protester from Neturia, grieved that many tribal families were uprooted without adequate compensation when land along the Damodar river had been bought for the dam back in the early 1950s.

"Patihto almost ten years and a half, we have been demanding proper compensation from the DVC. Instead of hearing our demand, now they want to displace us from our source of livelihood by cutting off our waters," Hansda told Mongabay India.

In 2009, on the 50th anniversary of commissioning of the Panchet dam, people of a dozen villages bordering the dam in Purulia district commenced a demonstration protesting "insufficient compensation." They complained that the compensation proved to be paltry in relation to the loss, not all sufferers fell under its scope, and some promises were not kept.

Villagers have ever since repeatedly brought the charge of unjust and partial compensation.

The DVC, in the 2023-24 annual report, stated that GVREL is constructing two Solar PV parks totalling 755 MW adjacent to and around Tilaya and Panchet Dam Reservoirs on the UMREPPs scheme. Out of these 755MW, GVREL contracted 310 MW Solar PV Projects under Phase I.

This includes award of contract to M/s. Sterling & Wilson for 155 MW Floating solar photovoltaic (FSPV) projects at Tilaiya, to M/s. L&T for 75 MW FSPV at Panchet and to M/s. NGSL for the balance 80 MW at Panchet, comprising 30 MW of FSPV and 50 MW of ground-mounted projects.

Tenders for the remaining 455 MW capacity of Phase II, also at Tilaiya and Panchet, would be floated later. "These projects will not only be adding to our growing renewable energy portfolio, but also enhance the strength of our efforts to minimize our carbon footprint," according to DVC annual report.

According to the government, the 100 MW floating solar park of 2022 in Telangana in southern India occupies 500 acres of reservoir water. The 278 MW floating plant in Madhya Pradesh is over 800 acres.

The DVC project is to install a 755 MW capacity at Tilaiya and Panchet. Some of the protesters' estimate, as obtained in negotiations with officials of DVC, is that 375 MW are going to Panchet. Fishermen living near the Panchet dam are concerned about losing access to approximately 1,500 acres of water.

Why do they not reduce their power consumption? They travel in AC cars, do their work in AC offices, and live in AC houses. How can they deny us our livelihood for the sake of reducing carbon footprint?" asks Robin Baskey, a resident of Neturia.

The protests

Discontent began building against the solar project at the close of 2024, when authorities from the DVC sat down with local residents regarding the project. Locals claim they objected to it immediately. Authorities, however, attempted to proceed with the development in January.

On 8 January 2025, when project contractor personnel arrived at the Maheshnadi area with workers to start work, a group of some hundreds of villagers from several villages in the Sarabari gram panchayat area chased them away. The Bharat Jakat Majhi Pargana Mahal, social umbrella organization of tribals, was involved in the agitation.

The demonstrators state the residents of Raibandh and Guniara commute across the reservoir on a boat to the Neturia block headquarter, but the solar project would eliminate the ferry ride. It takes 10-15 minutes in a boat. But, through road, it was a 25 km journey, stated Tudu.

The protests have been recurring sporadically since then. In February, a rally was organized in Purulia's Neturia. In March, a memorandum had been submitted to the DVC authorities.

"Fooling our ancestors once. Fooling tribal people everywhere in the world into a belief that they have brought big projects. Never benefit the oustees. Let us not be fooled again," the protester Tudu told the protest rally before a DVC office at Panchet on September 7. They also desired a bridge from Bathanbari to Maheshnadi.

This isn't the first floating solar project to have agitations from fishermen who depend on reservoir fishing. Fishermen in Maharashtra in western India have been protesting a 1,200 MW floating solar project at Nathsagar reservoir of Jayakwadi dam.

In Madhya Pradesh, central India, the 278 MW Omkareshwar Floating Solar Park, which is projected to become a 600 MW unit, "shows the magnitude and extent of India's clean energy ambitions," Union Minister Pralhad Joshi had said earlier this year. 

According to Bharath Jairaj, who is the program head of WRI India's energy program, the case for India is complex where the country has ambitious targets for renewable energy that could stress land. Therefore, water bodies are felt to be an alternative to land-based solar systems. However, many fishing communities also depend on the same water bodies for their livelihood, and therefore similar resource conflicts are emerging from floating solar projects as well.

What is needed is to conduct studies before projects are undertaken and relay their implications to fishers. An impact assessment of livelihood, aquatic life, and productivity needs to be done properly so that their problems can be taken care of, " Jairaj explained to Mongabay-India.

He added that conflicts over scarce resources are inherent in the transition to energy, and the process may be facilitated only by embracing a consultative approach. "We have to take the entire society with us to make the energy transition effective and meaningful," he said.

The Oju Hydroelectric Power Project (HEP) is the latest among a host of major dams planned to enhance the state government's hydropower portfolio. A 2,200 MW hydropower project was approved to be set up in the Upper Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh, marking the state government's intention to quickly increase hydropower production within the state. 

The Oju HEP was greenlit by the centrally-appointed Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) on September 12, subject to the Navayuga Engineering group — the developer of the project — incorporating simulations of glacial lake outburst flood scenarios into its project. The Committee recommended that a real-time monitoring and early warning system (EWS) will be set up in coordination with State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) and local administration, besides community awareness and mock drills for preparedness," the EAC stated, in view of increased glacial lakes in the area.

The Oju HEP is the second large dam to receive clearance in the Subansiri river basin. The 2000 MW run-of-river project (tapping the natural flow of a river) further downstream, the Subansiri Lower Dam, was cleared in 2003, but was under severe opposition from local people and activists regarding the adverse effects between 2010 and 2019. "When Subansiri Lower Dam was being cleared, one of the conditions was that there would be no construction further upstream." stated Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People. This was appealed and now projects like Oju have been permitted on a case-to-case basis."

The complete, cumulative effect of several dams on the river system is also not known. The Subansiri basin lies in Seismic Zone V, the most high-risk category, and the data that was used for the carrying capacity of the river was published the last time in 2014 — more than ten years ago. The Oju HEP environment impact assessment states that no protected areas or biodiversity reserves exist where the power project site is located. 

'Decade of hydropower'

Approval for the Oju HEP follows a large effort by the state government to produce additional hydroelectricity and "secure" border regions near China.It is a ten-year mission to expedite all green energy schemes," said chief minister Pema Khandu at an August press conference. "Green energy will be our strength, export, and identity."

"The pace at which the projects are being cleared in Arunachal Pradesh becomes a matter of concern regarding the impact assessment quality.". We’ve seen with the Subansiri Lower Project that mistakes about downstream impacts were made, that needed to be corrected,” said Sumit Vij, assistant professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. A rigorous review of the Lower Subansiri Dam's EIA concluded that it had only conducted downstream surveys up to seven kilometres downstream from the dam location and did not register key endangered species such as the Ganges river dolphin, which is frequently occurring in the river.

Similar arguments have been made by indigenous groups engaged in clearance activities for dams proposed throughout the state. For the 2,880 MW Dibang Multipurpose Project, situated in the state's eastern boundary, communities protested against losing their ancestral lands used as mithun grazing areas and for cultivation of medicinal plants.

Over 200 individuals participated in the public hearing for the Oju HEP. Minutes of the meeting included as an annexure to the impact assessment report identify apprehensions of families that were present. For instance, Keru Chader, a person belonging to the Nah tribe, expressed apprehension regarding losing grazing lands and compared it to "a holy place like Amarnath." In reply, the administration merely stated, "no impact on holy places in the project area and its surroundings are envisaged."

Water and Power Consultancy Services India Ltd (WAPCOS), an engineering consultancy and central public sector enterprise, conducted the environmental impact studies of the Lower Subansiri Infrastructure Project and the Oju HEP. It also prepared the impact study of the 1,200 MW Kalai II Hydropower project that is to be constructed on the Lohit river. A legal notice dated September 9, seen by Mongabay India, accuses the impact study for the Kalai II project of having been "prepared without undertaking any fresh scientific studies, site-specific assessments, or updates to present current environmental, social, and ecological conditions." WAPCOS is accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Education and Training to conduct environmental impact studies.

The central government is taking an active part in funding Arunachal Pradesh's hydropower dreams. In 2023, the central government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the state to acquire 12 dams whose development had been in limbo — among them the 3,097 MW Etalin project. Central Public Sector Undertakings, and not private operators, would acquire operations to make them more efficient, the government said

Each summer, climate educator Nikhil Sharma's classroom in a school in Ahmedabad would be vacant. "It was the intolerable heat that drove the children away from classrooms," recalls Sharma who taught science and social science at the school as a Teach For India fellow in 2018. He especially remembered one girl, Zainab, who had not reported to school for days. Alarmed, he went to her small tenement in a makeshift camp. He noticed that she had the whole body and face covered with heat rashes. "She got sick due to the heat wave. Her picture somehow lingered in my mind," he remembered.

Years on, heat continues to exclude children such as Zainab from the schoolroom. Climate effects, especially extreme weather conditions in 2024 interfered with the education of 250 million children across 85 nations. Ironically, it is such schooling in school which contributes significantly to equipping children for the coming years of a world that is warming.

Emphasizing the importance of climate education to better prepare the vulnerable children and the future generation, UNICEF's Executive Director Catherine Russell, refers in a UNICEF analysis, "Education is one of the services most often disrupted by climate hazards. But it is too often neglected in policy debates, even though it helps prepare children for climate adaptation."

This shortfall has provided opportunities for climate educators and civil societies to re-conceptualize climate education and provide it as experiential activities for the students.

Global warming or climate change is no kids' concept; even the adults sometimes struggle to grasp it, observes Sharma, founder now of Ahmedabad's ElemenTree Education Foundation. Having seen the impact of heat waves on the children and their school attendance, he changed his way of teaching about the environment and worked upon how to discuss climate in terms the children could identify.

"We understood that our approach had to be local and in local languages. Government or school big words like sequestration or mitigation don't resonate. But when we relate climate to their world — discussing the Sabarmati river rather than polar bears, or street heat waves rather than far-away floods — it evokes meaningful conversations. The children participate intensely because it becomes tangible to them," Sharma states.

The climate education situation

In a 2022 report, the updated and rewritten Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) of 166 nations were analyzed, with the report concluding that most nations were not improving the climate education system as part of their national climate plan. The inaction is mainly due to the limited climate finance instruments available in education.

India is one of the handful of nations in the world that has added environmental education officially into the school system following the Supreme Court instruction in 1991. The subject was officially included in primary schooling by the NCERT in the National Curriculum Framework of 2005. Further, India's National Action Plan on Climate Change (2008) fails to make education a central area of attention, while the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, despite being supportive of learning for the environment, is lacking in addressing climate threats to the education sector.

The NEP 2020 focuses on learning through experiences, building community interactions, and studying climate change from various angles, such as waste management, biodiversity, pollution, etc. But equipping teachers with training and capability building to implement the subject in their curriculum, hasn't been given high priority, opine experts.

Consequently, the pace of incorporating environmental education into the mainstream has been slow, although having created a strong 'Eco Schools' programme at the primary level around the implementation of sustainable practices and teacher training. The reach of the programme is claimed to have changed more than 250 schools in India in 18 states and trained about 12,500 teachers. But the numbers pale compared to 2024-25 Economic Survey facts which observe that "India's school education system serves 24.8 crore (2,480 lakhs) students across 14.72 lakh schools with 98 lakh teachers."

While US-based Climate Lit has an open-source library of climate resources and the UK's Carbon Literacy Project offers accredited training and certification to increase climate awareness among individuals and organisations, there is a big role to play and a lot of space for innovation and experimentation in India. And that is what Indian teachers, civil society organisations, and climate activists are starting to do — from ground zero.

Constructing a learning environment with regional orientation

Climate Educators' Network (CEN) was initiated when a group of academics at Azim Premji University saw the lack of appropriate teaching resources on pedagogy for climate. To look up for references in the classroom, they had to draw examples from case studies in the U.S., China or Europe. That gap prompted the vision of initiating an online repository of resources. In their search, they chanced upon TROP ICSU (Trans-disciplinary Research Oriented Pedagogy for Improving Climate Studies and Understanding) — a repository of detailed lesson plans and teaching materials from India and worldwide. TROP ICSU is now CEN's education and training partner. And along the way, they encountered Asar — a social impact advisory — that onboarded as a strategic partner to collaborate on climate action, justice and resilience.

We have green and eco clubs in the schools but no discussion on building systems-level awareness of climate change and adaptation and resilience for children and youth," Pallavi Phatak, Asar Director, Climate and Education, said to Mongabay India.

Also, what we need to do is incorporate climate learning, not make a whole subject of it. Climate has to enter history, geography — into all of it. We're big believers in that method," she says.

During the CEN's inaugural climate summit in January 2025, the group recognised the importance of developing regional centers to introduce local context in climate learning. They have begun creating projects together in Maharashtra, Bengaluru, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. It appears differently across regions, districts, and communities, based on where individuals are situated in society. That's why we are conceiving in regional hubs, rather than centralised solutions.". We must get together as a community to sort this out," emphasizes Sunayana Ganguly, co-founder of the Climate Educators Network. 

For example, the Bengaluru hub is an ecosystem of organisations that are coming together to build a non-formal education program around the priorities described in the Bengaluru Climate Action Plan. In another effort, CEN and Asar are joined by a couple of other organizations such as WRI-India, Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA), and Thicket Tales in partnering with the city's climate action cell to formulate a non-formal, activity-based curriculum that will empower students to interact meaningfully with climate resilience through their schools.

In Maharashtra, CEN has opted to approach the effort from the ground level. The staff of teachers is organizing a "listening activity" with zila parishad schools in districts like Beed and Raigad. The activity is centered on listening to teachers' perceptions of climate change — what they think, what they sense they need to know, and the questions they have regarding teaching action on climate. Phatak further contributes that in West Bengal, the hub has also been interested in synthesizing indigenous knowledge of adaptation and mitigation, while the discussions in Tamil Nadu are still getting underway.

"Tamil Nadu is the country's first state to make an iconic budgetary allocation of ₹ 24 crores for climate literacy. Our plan here is not only to facilitate grassroots-level conversations, but also to make sure this financial outlay isn't wasted," Phatak says.