The environmental questions Kerala is arguing about right now. They come up in conversation constantly, and a learner who knows the vocabulary can follow one of the more interesting public debates in India. WASTE — THE MOST VISIBLE മാലിന്യം waste. The structural difficulty is settlement: Kerala's continuous ribbon of houses along every road means there is almost nowhere that is not somebody's back garden, and a conventional landfill needs a large area away from housing. So Kerala moved toward decentralised management — household composting, source segregation, and collection of non-organic waste by local teams. ജൈവ മാലിന്യം organic waste · അജൈവ മാലിന്യം non-organic തരംതിരിക്കൽ segregation · കമ്പോസ്റ്റ് · ബയോബിൻ ഹരിതകർമ്മ സേന the green workforce — the local collection teams പ്ലാസ്റ്റിക് നിരോധനം the plastic ban ഇത് എവിടെയാണ് ഇടേണ്ടത്? Where should this go? Practical instruction for a resident: ask your neighbours how it works where you are, because the arrangement differs by panchayat, and getting it wrong is a genuine social offence, not a technicality. And carry a cloth സഞ്ചി. QUARRYING — THE ARGUMENT YOU WILL OVERHEAR പാറമട a quarry · ക്വാറി Kerala's construction boom needs enormous quantities of rock and sand. The rock comes from quarries cut into the hills; the sand came from riverbeds. Both have consequences, and both are economically significant and employ people. The argument is not between people who care about the environment and people who do not — it is between a real ecological risk and a real economic need, and Malayalis on both sides are sincere. Know it; do not adjudicate it. THE CLIMATE PICTURE Kerala is exposed on several fronts at once: a long, low-lying, densely populated coast; a steep hinterland; a monsoon whose timing and intensity are becoming less predictable; and cities built on reclaimed wetland. Fishing communities on the coast are the most directly affected and among the most economically vulnerable. കാലാവസ്ഥാ വ്യതിയാനം climate change · തീരശോഷണം coastal erosion ഉരുൾപൊട്ടൽ landslide · പ്രളയം flood · കടലാക്രമണം sea incursion ദുരന്തം disaster · ദുരന്തനിവാരണം disaster management ജാഗ്രതാ നിർദ്ദേശം an official alert റെഡ് അലർട്ട് · ഓറഞ്ച് അലർട്ട് · യെല്ലോ അലർട്ട് — now ordinary vocabulary, announced routinely in the monsoon. If you are in Kerala then, learn to check these. A red alert is not advisory. THE OTHER SIDE Kerala has a strong environmental movement with real history. The Silent Valley campaign of the nineteen seventies and eighties stopped a hydroelectric dam in an area of undisturbed rainforest — one of the most significant environmental victories in Indian history, driven substantially by the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad, a people's science movement with a mass membership. Silent Valley is now a national park. A popular science organisation, writing in Malayalam for ordinary readers, mobilised enough public opinion to stop a state hydro project. That is not a small thing. Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.