Municipal solid waste constitutes a major portion of the total city waste produced in India. Very often this is ignored while considering waste problems in the cities. The cities are now having enormous environmental problems due to municipal solid waste. The segregation of waste is essential to implement Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. It has been an unsustainable and uneconomical practice to not segregate waste at the source. The paper explains the waste segregation activities of the householders of the city of Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India and the social and environmental outcomes of such behavior. The paper is based on both primary and secondary sources of data.

Human-environment relationship is a prominent discourse in many academic disciplines. Initial studies in social sciences viewed nature being independent of society but gradually researchers proved that both are related and dependent upon each other. Current studies confirm the association between humans and the environment which changes with time and space. Waste is part of the human environment and is ubiquitous. Climate change, environmental pollution, and vulnerabilities associated with it have been major concerns for policymakers, activists, and academicians across the globe over the past couple of decades. The report of International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 2006 delineated waste management as an important part of urban infrastructure having close relation to issues of urban lifestyle, resource consumption pattern, income level, jobs, socio-economic and cultural factors. According to World Bank estimation in 2018, waste generation will increase from 2.01 billion tones in 2016 to 3.40 billion tones in 2050. However, despite its significance in the academic world, the waste remains under-theorized. The meaning and value of waste vary from person to person and also from culture to culture. Rapid urbanization and globalization have led to the social, economic and political crisis with an increased amount of waste. The multidimensional nature of waste creates the need for interpreting it in a distinct way. With the help of theoretical pluralism, this paper aims at explaining the concept of waste through the theoretical lens of political ecology and actor-network theory. The political ecology perspective aims at explaining the environmental issues by analyzing the political-economical causes and provides the alternative for solving the issue. The actor-network theory explains the environmental issues by studying the association among actors at various scales with a special focus on the power interest of the actors as the cause of such association. These two approaches can be integrated based on the pragmatic approach and can help in understanding the complex reality of waste. The paper views that societal problems like waste can be studied with the use of both these theories with a firm hold on the context as they tend to transcend the dualism between nature and society.

The study was conducted among young children from the villages near the migratory corridor of the elephants, by employing draw and write method which is a subjective yet effective method in understanding the perception of the young stakeholders on complex issues like HEC, coexistence and conservation. The young respondents expressed negative interaction between humans and elephants, and also the vulnerability indicators. The discontent among young children was evident and it could further erode the future stakeholders' traditional and cultural connect that contributes to safeguard future of wildlife. Content analysis of the drawn sketches complemented by subsequent discussion in the context of their production provided profound and in-depth insights into the complex situation.

The COVID-19 virus is highly contagious as it does not respect borders, societies or communities. Even with most of the world in lockdown and clinicians battling with support measures for those infected, the governments are borrowing combat measures from each other despite scores of uncertainties. However early or late stage a country is in as regards to the virus spread, the governments are desperately trying to arrest the crisis that is dynamic and ever evolving. As such there is very little to claim about the success or lack of it, of any measure as a preventive or curative one. With this at the backdrop, this paper intends to provide a rapid assessment of reorientation of Government policies and strategies to address the emergent health and non-health issues associated therewith. With lots of limitations and within the ever-changing scenario of COVID-19 calling for continuous changes in the adopted measures, the paper documents key themes and policy changes that the Government of an Indian State-Odisha, known widely for its track record of disaster preparedness and management, has adopted in a challenging and dynamic situation. It utilises known and select Governmental and institutional sources to offer insights into some core social, economic and political issues that social scientists and policy researchers will be interested in investigating further in the days to come.