India

The elephant in the room of my reporting on security issues within India and Pakistan is the messy, insecure relationship between them. The components of that relationship will be familiar to students of territorial conflict elsewhere: perennial border skirmishes punctuated alternately by all-out war and half-hearted peace talks; sporadic public outbursts calling for deadly final solutions mixed with heart-rending anecdotes about cross-border love.

On October 5 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. The eighth most destructive earthquake on record, an estimated 75,000 people were killed. Millions more were left homeless as entire villages were flattened.

In my reporting, I often hear that the major threat to India's security is the unevenness of its development.

Washington has lately become concerned that Pakistan is dragging its feet in the fight against the Taliban because it sees the Islamists as a check on its archrival, India, whose influence in Afghanistan is growing. What alarms Pakistan most is the possibility that India will gain control over the water from two Afghan rivers that flow into the volatile Pakistan border regions, where water shortages could inflame local insurgencies.

People across the globe are learning that the glaciers in the western Himalaya are receding as fast as any place on the planet. But few know how the glacier's recession is measured. In September, I joined an expedition team led by one of the foremost glaciologists in India, and trekked to Kolohai glacier. These pictures show how the measurements on Kashmir's glaciers are taken and gives insight into the lives of people already affected by climate change.

Rebecca Byerly reports for Voice of America on the struggling houseboat industry in Kashmir. This report is part of Pulitzer Center-sponsored project "Paradise Lost: Kashmir's Vanishing Glaciers, Waters, and Forests"

Disputed territory faces challenges as impact of climate change begins to take its toll.

Any bleak assessments suggesting a collapse of Kerala's Model overlook the greatest asset this multicultural state possesses: its people. Here are four examples—the catalyst of Kerala's achievements.

The economy of consuming-but-not-producing in Kerala results in a brain drain, as its educated population migrates abroad—especially the Persian Gulf, sparking numerous profound social issues.

Sonali Kudva, Pulitzer Student Fellow

The climate story of South Asia begins in the Himalayas, home to thousands of rain-fed glaciers that make up the largest body of ice outside the poles. In the winter, these glaciers capture the precipitation that makes it over the mountains. In the warmer months, they melt away water that feeds major rivers like the Ganga, the Indus, and the Brahmaputra. The system is a 'natural water tanker' for the 1.5 billion people living in the river basins below.The second important feature of the story is its extreme monsoon, in which half the rain for the season falls in only 15 days.