Waste dumping hits roadbock in Goa
A proposal by the Panaji municipality to make Baiguinim in old Goa a permanent waste disposal site has hit a roadblock after protests by local people and heritage experts. Spread over an area of
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Delhi s high tech cows
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (mcd) has come up with a unique solution to the traffic and sanitation menace posed by stray cattle. It is implanting microchips in the cattle before they are
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Snippets
• 17 Chinese fisherfolk, who were arrested and convicted for poaching in Philippine waters off Palawan, have been pardoned by President Arroyo as they were "first-time offenders'. • Hong
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New varieties will be freely available
How would your research benefit India and other south and Southeast Asian countries? Our team has introduced the submergence-tolerance trait into a rice variety (Swarna) that is already popular
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UPDATE
With Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on a hunger strike, (as events stood on December 8, 2006), things are bound not to be normal. Banerjee's hunger strike comes as a mark of protest against
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Pune s plan
A voluminous document promises "the translation of visions into missions, missions into actions and actions into outcomes'.
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Hyderabad blues
Hyderabad has submitted a wish list worth Rs 20,017 crore to MoUD, under JNNURM. The ministry's central sanctioning and monitoring committee has approved Rs 379 crore and released Rs 33.22 crore as the first instalment.<br>
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Strong colas and weak governments
When we released our study on pesticides in soft drinks, our objective was clear: we needed action on regulations, which had been stymied because of corporate pressure. What we hadn t anticipated was
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BoA clears 14 new SEZs
The Board of Approval (BoA) of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) on Monday cleared 14 new proposals, including ten formal approvals. While two SEZs each have been cleared in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, one each will come up in Maharashtra, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. The BoA granted formal approvals to two SEZs of the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd. (SIPCOT), one for transport engineering goods at Tirunelveli and another of automobile and auto ancillary at Thiruvannamalai. Similarly, two SEZs of Mahindra Worldcity (Jaipur) Ltd. of handicrafts and light engineering at Jaipur were given formal approvals. Other SEZs cleared include an information technology SEZ by Videocon Realtors and Infrastructure Ltd. at Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, IT SEZ by Devbhumi Realtors Pvt. Ltd. at Ranga Reddy District in Andhra Pradesh, pharmaceuticals SEZ by JB SEZ Pvt. Ltd. at Panoli in Gujarat and Power SEZ by Wardha Power Company at Chandrapur in Maharashtra. According to Commerce Secretary G. K. Pillai, who also heads the Board of Approval, so far formal approvals have been granted for setting up of 439 SEZs out of which 201 have been notified as on date. The Commerce Secretary said that over Rs. 67,347 crore had been invested in these notified SEZs, giving direct employment to 97,478 persons, which is in addition to the employment provided to 1.83 lakh persons by the seven Central Government established SEZs.
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Protest against survey for Science City
Land survey taken up for construction of a Science City in Amadagur and Obuladevaracheruvu mandals in Anantapur district has become controversial. The survey works were recently handed over to the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC). Eight teams from the APIIC have taken up land survey in Amadagur mandal. While the Congress leaders are responding favourably to the survey, the Telugu Desam leaders are raising several objections. They staged a rasta roko and dharna in Amadagur two days ago, protesting against land acquisition for the project. There are 42,897 acres in Amadagur mandal with 7,000 survey numbers. There are 9,630.26 acres for 1,520 survey numbers in Tummala village, 1,568.83 acres of land in Yerigivaripalle and a similar extent of land in Pulukuntapalli. Survey is also being taken up in Lokojupalli, Karimireddypalli, Dademvaripalli, Amadagur, Sikirevulapalli, Chinaganipalli, Kassamudram, Mahmadabad, J.K.Palli, Koragattupalli and other villages. Congress leaders say that most farmers are ready to sell their lands while TD leaders deny this.
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De lends support to solid waste disposal project
BANKURA: The district town woke up to a different scene today as it witnessed state school education minister, Mr Partha De, knocking door-to-door to help extend a scientific mode of garbage collection. The minister distributed pots to be used for segregation of solid waste at source at his own constituency today. The Bankura municipality, as part of the Centre's Integrated Small & Medium Township Development Programme finally started working on solid waste management. The venture was flagged off by Mr De. The pilot project was launched in Pratapbagan locality in Ward 11. "The locals should wake up with the most scientific mode of solid waste disposal. The biodegradable and non-degradable garbage should be segregated at source. This is the most modern concept accepted globally,' Mr De said. The Bankura municipality has initially launched the project in Ward 11. The self help groups are being engaged to help collection and transportation of the waste from door-to-door. The waste articles are to be transported to the trenching ground in Kesra locality in the outskirts of the town.
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Band aid, in wrong place
No one asks the farmerBringing up babus With its Rs 600 billion farm loan waiver in the current budget, the government has applied some band aid to the financial haemorrhaging of India's farmers. It is another matter that the hurt is at some other place. The farmer has difficulty in obtaining cheap and reliable credit; various laws prevent him from selling his produce at the most competitive prices in the open market; there is no reliable advice available to him on how best to tend his fields in an economical manner; existing farming techniques, guided by corporate interests, continue to suck life out of the soil without replenishing it and there is no system of health security in the villages. On all these counts, the government has yet to show even minimal movement. The farm loan waiver gives the impression that farmers do not wish to repay their loans. This is a serious misrepresentation of the ground reality. According to figures from the NABARD, only some 10 per cent of the farmers default on bank loans. And even then, it is rarely that farming assets are taken away by the banks for failure to pay back loans. The problem for farmers lies in the loans taken from informal sources: moneylender and relatives. Often, the moneylender himself is a prosperous neighbourhood farmer. He gives large loans that are beyond the paying capacity of the borrower. These loans come with exorbitant rates of interest and severe penalties for default. The lender here does not falter in taking away farming assets, including land. After all, this could be a strategy for acquiring more land for himself. The advice of the agriculture minister a few days ago at Mumbai that farmers need not pay back loans taken from
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FinMin mulled Rs 5,000-cr guarantee company before farm loan waiver
Prior to announcing the Rs 60,000-crore farm loan waiver package, the finance ministry had toyed with the idea of setting up an Agriculture Credit Guarantee Corporation with a corpus of around Rs 5,000 crore to deal with bad loans. The entity would have insured lenders against borrower defaults with banks making less provisioning for such loans and continuing to offer farm loans. However, the plan was dropped after the amount of the waiver and relief package rose to a massive Rs 60,000 crore. "We then thought of giving direct subsidies to farmers as there will be no leakage in this scheme and the benefits will go directly to farmers,' said a government official. Cooperative banks account for Rs 37,000 crore or about 61 per cent of the Rs 60,000-crore package announced in the Budget. Regional rural banks and scheduled commercial banks account for Rs 12,000 crore and Rs 11,000 crore, respectively. The details of the farm package are likely to be finalised by March 25. As the government will implement this package over a period of three financial years, it may make a provision of up to Rs 25,000 crore in 2008-09. Part of the financial assistance due for restructuring of cooperatives according to the recommendations of the Vaidyanathan Committee is also likely to be part of the package, officials say. Cooperatives and banks may also have to share a little burden in case of default loan accounts, which have been written off for prudential accounting norms.
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Raje Govt. to expand food for poor scheme
The Rajasthan Government is planning to expand its ambitious "Akshay Kaleva' scheme for providing cooked food to the poor at subsidised prices at public places in Jaipur by seeking charitable contributions from private donors on their personal and family occasions. State Local Self Government Secretary Manjeet Singh said at a review meeting of the department here that prominent people and interest families in the city could arrange for food under the scheme on festive occasions such as birthdays, wedding anniversaries and get-together. The Akshay Kaleva scheme is run by the Jaipur Municipal Corporation in association with a non-government organisation, Akshay Patra, to serve cooked food at a subsides rate of Rs.5. The scheme is being introduced in other districts as well. Mr. Singh said urban development would be strengthened through e-governance and evolving alternative sources of income for the local bodies. Progress of schemes The progress of schemes such as Nirmal Ghat, Pannadhay Jeevan Amrit and urban landscape improvement was also reviewed at the review meeting. Jaipur Mayor Ashok Parnami said dwelling units for the urban poor would be constructed shortly on 28 bighas of land earmarked in Shastri Nagar, while the cremation and burial grounds would be developed under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.
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R K Pachauri
Dr Rajendra K Pachauri assumed his current responsibilities as the Chief Executive of TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) in 1982, first as Director and, since April 2001, as Director-General. TERI
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Global cops
Is it possible for civil societies of different nations to work together to develop a global civil society to fight for just global social and ecological policies?
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Rape of the rock
The heavenly idyll of a carefree people, happy to welcome tourists, gay in their carnival, peaceloving and gastronomic, is being devastated due to the avarice of miners
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"History does not repeat itself"
A pioneer in the field of environmental history, <font class='UCASE'>Donald Worster </font> of the University of Kansas in the US highlights the importance of the subject in understanding present day ecological crises in a conversation with <font class=
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Going the bio way
The Biovillage project provides rural folk the finance and technical knowhow to cultivate for the market while conserving water and soil
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The malaise down south
There's enough water in the tanks of Bangalore, Madras and Hyderabad, but more than enough corruption leaves the south high and dry