India

This archive collects solutions-journalism stories and milestones from India — covering health, environment, education, technology, and social progress. Each entry highlights real developments and the people behind them.

Solar farm from above, for article on India solar capacity additions, for article on India solar capacity

India adds record 24.5 GW of solar in 2024

By / / Good News For Humankind

India’s solar boom hit a new high in 2024, with 24.5 gigawatts of new capacity added in a single year — more than double the year before. A big part of that growth came from rooftops: 700,000 households installed panels in just 10 months, helped along by a new government subsidy aimed at lower-income families. Off-grid solar nearly tripled, bringing electricity to rural communities the main grid has long struggled to reach. India’s total renewable capacity now sits above 209 gigawatts, nearly rivaling Germany’s entire power system. What makes this milestone resonate beyond India is the pairing of massive utility-scale projects with solar that actually reaches ordinary homes — a model the rest of the world’s clean energy transition could learn from.

Aerial view of a high voltage substation., for article on India grid investment

India unveils whopping $109 billion transmission plan for renewable energy

By / / Good News For Humankind

India’s power ministry just committed $109 billion to rebuild the country’s electricity grid — one of the largest single energy infrastructure investments any nation has ever made. The plan would triple India’s renewable capacity to 600 gigawatts by 2032, with long-distance high-voltage lines carrying solar power from Rajasthan’s plains and wind from Tamil Nadu’s coast to the cities and factories that need it. Grid bottlenecks have quietly become the biggest obstacle to clean energy worldwide, from the U.S. to Germany to Australia, so it matters that the world’s third-largest emitter is treating transmission as a top priority. If the wires get built, hundreds of millions gain cleaner, cheaper power — and other large economies gain a model worth copying.

Greater one-horned rhino in grassland, for article on rhino poaching decline

India’s state of Assam sees 86% drop in poaching and five-fold increase in rhinos since 2016

By / / Good News For Humankind

One-horned rhinos in Assam have rebounded to 3,000, climbing from roughly 600 in the 1960s and marking the first year on record with zero rhino poaching anywhere in India. Behind the recovery is a sharp shift since 2016: poaching down 86%, nearly 100,000 acres added to protected reserves, and ranger units patrolling with drones and night vision through the moonlit nights when poachers move. The greater one-horned rhino has since been downgraded from Endangered to Vulnerable, a milestone India and Nepal made possible together. Assam’s blend of habitat expansion and serious enforcement now offers a working playbook for rhino countries across Africa — proof that even the most hunted megafauna on Earth can come back.

Elderly Indian man, for article on home voting India

For the first time, India’s elderly and disabled are able to vote from home

By / / Good News For Humankind

Home voting came to India’s national elections for the first time in 2024, opening the ballot to citizens aged 85 and older and to voters with significant disabilities — a group that together numbers more than 17 million people across the country. A team of polling officials visits each home, collects the ballot in person, and videographs the process to protect both secrecy and trust. In Churu, Rajasthan, eight family members with disabilities voted together from their living room; in remote corners of Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, elderly voters skipped journeys they could no longer make. In the largest election in human history, it’s a quiet but powerful reminder that democracies grow stronger when they bend toward their people, not the other way around.

Aerial view of a geothermal power facility surrounded by tropical landscape for an article about Indonesia coal phase-out, for article on India coal capacity share

Coal’s share of power capacity in India drops below 50% for first time since 1960s

By / / Good News For Humankind

Coal now powers less than half of India’s electricity capacity for the first time since the 1960s — a quiet but historic line just crossed by the world’s most populous country. Renewables made up nearly three-quarters of the new capacity India added in the first quarter of 2024, and the country has already hit its 2030 goal of sourcing half its power from non-fossil sources, six years ahead of schedule. India has also climbed from ninth to third in global solar generation in less than a decade, behind only China and the United States. It’s a vivid reminder that when ambition, policy, and investment line up, energy transitions can move faster than almost anyone expected.

Aerial photography of solar photovoltaic power plants in sunny weather, for article on Khavda Renewable Energy Park

The world’s largest clean energy plant is now under construction in the Indian state of Gujarat

By / / Good News For Humankind

The world’s largest renewable energy facility is rising from a salt desert in western India, sprawling across more than 200 square miles — roughly five times the footprint of Paris. Once complete in about five years, the Khavda Renewable Energy Park is expected to power 16 million Indian homes with clean electricity. Developer Adani Green Energy chose the barren Gujarat site precisely because it offers vast scale without displacing communities or wildlife, removing a common obstacle to major infrastructure. The project anchors India’s push toward 500 gigawatts of non-fossil capacity by 2030. For a country facing the world’s steepest energy demand growth in the decades ahead, Khavda is a hopeful sign that developing nations can leapfrog the fossil-heavy path wealthier countries once took.

River dolphin, for article on river dolphin declaration

11 countries sign global pact to protect endangered river dolphins

By / / Good News For Humankind

River dolphins just got their first global lifeline: 11 countries have signed the Global Declaration for River Dolphins, a pact aiming to double Asian populations and halt declines across South America by 2030. It’s a meaningful turn for a group of species that has lost nearly three-quarters of its numbers since the 1980s. The hope isn’t abstract — China’s Yangtze finless porpoise population grew 23% over five years under strict protections, and the Indus river dolphin has nearly doubled in two decades. Because dolphins signal the health of the rivers nearly a billion people depend on, their recovery points toward something larger: that coordinated, community-rooted conservation can still pull ecosystems back from the brink.