The flagship environmental initiative has achieved ‘negligible’ results. Why so little progress, and what are the risks as the planet gets hotter? Plus, fusion dance pioneer Usha Jey

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India set out to expand its forested areas a decade ago. Last week, however, we learned that the forest cover programme had barely taken root when the government’s auditors released their findings of the flagship Green India Mission. The shortfall of 97.57% from India’s initial pledge in 2014 was stark enough to alarm the government’s own auditor, who described the progress as “negligible”.

Yet if you ask the government about forest cover, you’ll get a far greener picture.

From student organisers to a model-turned-activist, these women are risking their reputations – and sometimes their lives – to fight against injustice. Plus, actor Imran Khan recommends a classic film

There is much to be said for the extraordinary women living ordinary lives, who nonetheless shaped India. Women have changed public life in the country far more than their presence in formal politics would suggest.

And so, as India marked its 79th birthday over the weekend, I found myself reflecting on the multitude of people’s movements, big and small – as well as the women who helped shape them. During India’s struggle for freedom from British rule, women organised boycotts of British goods, made contraband salt and marched to confront the police, taking on roles usually dominated by men. In the 1970s Chipko movement, protesting deforestation, women put their bodies on the line, wrapping them around trees to stop them being felled, turning a local struggle into a national reckoning over environment and development. More recently, grandmothers in Shaheen Bagh sat to protest the citizenship law, which critics have denounced as discriminatory, creating space for dissent when many thought none existed.