India In Transition

Why some experiences are recognised and others dismissed? And what does climate change have to do with the way we feel?

We often recognise climate change through the things we can see: extreme heat, floods, cyclones, polluted air or disappearing ecosystems. But its impact can also show up in quieter ways, irritability during extreme heat, guilt over everyday choices, anxiety about the future, helplessness, overwhelm or simply the feeling that something is changing around us and we don't quite know how to name it.

In this episode of India in Transition, Heeta Lakhani and Pranshu Patel are joined by counselling psychologists Nidhi Goswami and Ruchi Bhutada to explore the intersection of climate change and mental health in India.

At the centre of the conversation is a simple question: does something have to become catastrophic before it counts as a climate experience?

We talk about why climate and mental health are still often treated as separate issues, whether labels such as climate anxiety, eco-anxiety and climate grief actually help, and why language matters when people's lived experiences don't neatly fit into clinical or climate terminology.

The conversation also explores guilt and privilege — including the feeling that your own experience isn't serious enough to talk about because someone else is suffering more, and how that can prevent people from recognising the ways climate change is already affecting their lives.

Nidhi and Ruchi also unpack the tension between individual and collective action, why trying to make every personal choice perfectly sustainable can lead to overwhelm, and how systems thinking can help put responsibility into perspective.

And finally, we come back to something that runs throughout the episode: community. When climate change feels too large for one person to hold, being able to talk, organise, learn and act with other people can create space for both difficult emotions and hope.

Because climate change doesn't have to destroy your home before it changes the way you feel, live or imagine your future.

Connect with our guests

Nidhi Goswami
Counselling Psychologist, Founder of Perch Mental Health & Co-founder of Climate Undone
LinkedIn:https://in.linkedin.com/in/nidhi83
Perch Mental Health:https://www.instagram.com/perch_mentalhealth/

Ruchi Bhutada
Counselling Psychologist, Co-founder of Saanjh & Advisory Board Member at Climate Undone
LinkedIn:https://in.linkedin.com/in/ruchibhutada16
Saanjh:https://saanjhwellness.in/

Our Hosts:

In this episode of India in Transition, Heeta Lakhani and Pranshu Patel sit down with Ashish Khanna, Director General of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), to explore why solar is increasingly becoming a question of energy security, economic strategy and development not just climate action.

As geopolitical instability and fuel price shocks expose the risks of relying on imported fossil fuels, Ashish explains why countries across the Global South are looking more closely at energy that can be generated domestically, and why solar could become an even bigger part of India’s transition.

But scaling solar is about much more than installing more panels. We talk about the need for energy storage and flexible electricity grids, rooftop solar, solar-powered agriculture and decentralised renewable energy. We also look at some of the harder questions around critical minerals, recycling, battery and panel waste, and what a circular solar economy could look like.

The conversation then moves to the people behind the transition: what happens to workers and communities dependent on existing fossil-fuel industries? Where could the next generation of green jobs come from? And how could AI, digital infrastructure and energy trading create entirely new opportunities for young people?

Finally, we zoom out to India’s wider growth story and the role it could play in demonstrating a different pathway to energy security and development across the Global South.

In this episode:

Find out more:

Ashish Khanna — https://in.linkedin.com/in/ashish-khanna-b68989/

International Solar Alliance — https://www.isolaralliance.org/

Heeta Lakhani — https://in.linkedin.com/in/heeta-lakhani-9042b677/

Pranshu Patel — https://in.linkedin.com/in/pranshu1999/

Climate Undone — https://www.climateundone.org

The ClimAct Initiative — http://www.theclimactinitiative.org/

India in Transition is hosted by Heeta Lakhani and Pranshu Patel and created by The ClimAct Initiative and Climate Undone, exploring the people, choices and ideas shaping India’s transition.

What does it mean to spend more than four decades fighting for nature  and still believe there is something worth fighting for?

For the first episode of India in Transition, Pranshu Patel and Heeta Lakhani sit down with Bittu Sahgal, one of India’s most prominent voices for wildlife and nature conservation.Bittu has spent much of his life making the case that our ecological future cannot be separated from the choices India makes about development, economics and society.

This conversation looks back at that lifetime of work, at what India has understood about conservation, what we continue to get wrong, how the environmental movement has changed and what keeps someone hopeful after witnessing decades of ecological loss and change.

At the centre of the episode is a question we keep coming back to:

What does a lifetime of hope look like?

And perhaps more importantly, what can the rest of us learn from it?

About Bittu Sahgal:

Bittu Sahgal, Editor Sanctuary Asia, Head of the Sanctuary Nature Foundation, and India's one million strong Kids for Tigers program, is a strong voice for nature conservation, climate mitigation and biospheric health. He has made it his life’s mission to direct world leaders away from short-term development objectives that could compromise the ability of India to sustain its population of 1.4 billion people. He believes that the ecological foundations of all nations are the bedrock on which global economic and social foundations rest. Believing that climate change poses the greatest ever threat to humanity, he is a strong Nature Needs Half advocate who works with young adults and policy makers, arguing that rewilding Planet Earth is critical to the long term survival of Homo sapiens.

Explore Bittu's work:
Sanctuary Nature Foundation
https://www.sanctuarynaturefoundation.org/

Kids for Tigers
https://www.sanctuarynaturefoundation.org/

Bittu Sahgal on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/bittusahgal/

Follow India in Transition:

Website - https://climateundone.org/india-in-transition/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/india_in_transition/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@IndiaInTransition-podcast

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/india-in-transition/about/

Meet the Hosts:

Heeta Lakhani
LinkedIn:https://in.linkedin.com/in/heeta-lakhani-9042b677

Pranshu Patel
LinkedIn:https://in.linkedin.com/in/pranshu1999

The Organisations Behind the Podcast:

The ClimAct Initiative:https://www.theclimactinitiative.org/

Climate Undone:https://climateundone.org/