
Articles by Raksha Kumar
I am a multimedia journalist focusing on human rights, politics and gender. In the past six years, I have reported for the New York Times, BBC, Guardian, TIME, Foreign Affairs, The Hindu, Caravan and Scroll among others. A Fulbright Scholar, I graduated from Columbia University in 2011. As a Chevening fellow in 2015, I researched right wing ideology among South Asians in the UK.
I have reported from 12 countries including Israel and the West Bank.
For the past two years, I have worked in Chhattisgarh and Kashmir attempting to uncover the State's overreach and its impact on residents. I filed more than 40 stories from the region including on the impacts of mineral extraction on the Maoist movement; sexual violence by armed forces; effects of crony capitalism in tribal areas and militarisation's impact on local industry in Kashmir etc.
I wrote, shot and directed a documentary film on the life of the Rationalists in India that was commissioned by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust. In March 2016, I was awarded the Chameli Devi Jain Award for outstanding media personality.

Special series
Forest Trackers
- Mennonite colonies linked to deforestation of Indigenous territories and protected areas in Paraguay
- Deforestation on the rise in Quintana Roo, Mexico, as Mennonite communities move in
- Logged and loaded: Cambodian prison official suspected in massive legalized logging operation
- Bolivian national park hit hard by forest fires in 2022, satellite data show

Oceans
- Deep-sea mining meeting closes without resolving whether mining can start in July
- ‘Manta grid’ provides a ray of hope against industrial bycatch threat
- As oceans warm, temperate reef species edge closer to extinction, study shows
- Can we control marine invaders by eating them?

Amazon Conservation
- RSPO suspension of Brazil palm oil exporter tied to Mongabay land-grabbing report
- Tropical forest regeneration offsets 26% of carbon emissions from deforestation
- Plan to mine ‘clean energy’ metals in Colombian Amazon splits communities
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections

Land rights and extractives
- Will clean-energy minerals provoke a shift in how mining is done in Africa?
- Plan to mine ‘clean energy’ metals in Colombian Amazon splits communities
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections
- Brazil tackles illegal miners, but finds their mercury legacy harder to erase

Endangered Environmentalists
- ‘You don’t kill people to protect forests’: New Thai parks chief raises alarm
- Vietnam’s environmental NGOs face uncertain status, shrinking civic space
- ‘We lost the biggest ally’: Nelly Marubo on her friend Bruno Pereira’s legacy
- Murders of 2 Pataxó leaders prompt Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to launch crisis office

Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’

Conservation Effectiveness
- For key Bangladesh wetland, bid for Ramsar status is no guarantee of protection
- Biodiversity, human rights safeguards crucial to nature-based solutions: Critics
- Protecting canids from planet-wide threats offers ecological opportunities
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows

Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Robust river governance key to restoring Mekong River vitality in face of dams
- As hydropower dams quell the Mekong’s life force, what are the costs?
- As Indonesia’s new capital takes shape, risks to wider Borneo come into focus
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
