Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli’s Cities and Canopies documented how trees in Indian cities have become a record of planning decisions and civic memory. Its wilderness is entangled with its self-image and its habits in ways that are more public than could be in any other Indian city. Politics of peopleIn India’s environmental history, Delhi is perhaps most notable for having been the site of highly visible experiments in governance. Few other Indian cities seem able to reveal how power makes landscapes and how landscapes in turn discipline power. The state used trees and gardens to insist on order, hygiene, modernity, and permanence and thus a politics of people began to determine which species could thrive.

Source: The Hindu January 01, 2026 15:16 UTC