All the lights are green
Over the past 30 years, the environmental movement in the West has grown dramatically and moved from strength to strength. But little has been written about how this movement has been organised.
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The great water rip off
URBAN India faces a water crisis Madras to Jodhpur, most cities are already facing the crippling effects of scarcity. There is hardly any city in India that canboast of a 24-hour water supply. But
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Killing fields
The Congress wields the butcher's knife, and environment is the casualty
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Panchayat reigns supreme
The Vaddis are the dominating community in Kolleru's fishing villages. They have a tightly controlled form of self governance that ensures equitable distribution of income
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The battle of the Indian bulge - II
I never thought I would write in defence of the Indian state. But I am. The de construction of the notion of public space and the practice of public service is evident and will cripple us enormously.
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Greening a state
Himachal Pradesh chief minister has broken all bureaucratic shackles and initiated eco friendly programmes in the state
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Bridging the gaps in R & D policy
The 80th session of the Indian Science Congress ended in the first week of January in Goa without adding to anyone's knowledge or wisdom. The importance of the theme of the conference -- Science and
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Farm loan waiver runs into trouble
Nath: Where Will Funds Come From? The mega loan waiver announced by the Manmohan Singh government is running into some in-house scepticism with doubts about funding for the give-away being aired in the Cabinet. On Monday, a meeting of the Cabinet saw commerce minister Kamal Nath asking whether the government had made provisions for the Rs 60,000 crore scheme it has announced in the Budget. He also seemed to argue that it would have been better if the Cabinet had been taken into confidence. Sources said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh intervened to commend finance minister P Chidambaram and the loan waiver. Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee also said that the finance ministry has chalked out the broad direction and details will soon be worked out. This reflected doubts put forward that the waiver unfairly lumps farmers tilling irrigated lands with those in dry-land conditions and that the two hectare cut-off for beneficiaries cannot apply across the country. Wondering whether the waiver would benefit distressed farmers, minister of state for new and renewable energy Vilas Muttemwar told TOI, "The problem lies in many farmers in areas like Vidarbha owning up to 15 acres of land, but being very poorly off. It is not just the small farmer, even those with larger holdings, who actually can access credit, are suffering.' Muttemwar said he would speak to the Prime Minister and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and ask for the eligibility for the Rs 60,000 crore waiver announced by the government to be altered in a state or regionwise manner. He also said that even smaller farmers might not be able to use the waiver as they were largely indebted to private money lenders. Muttemwar disputed agriculture minister and NCP boss Sharad Pawar's call to farmers to stop paying money lenders. "This is easier said than done. These loan sharks get farmers to sign agreement to sale documents. Even those sales are being closely scrutinised, it is not easy for farmers to simply throw off the yoke of money lenders,' he said. The minister's views could be some cause for worry as he represents Nagpur, the political centre of the Vidarbha region which has been reeling from suicides by farmers. The criticism that farmers who need help might be outside the waiver also dovetails with the argument that UPA's largesse will help well-off agriculturalists in areas like western Maharashtra. Well-known agro-economist M S Swaminathan agreed that it was difficult to compare farmers from green revolution states with those in impoverished dust bowls. "Comparing farmers owning two hectares in Punjab with those with holdings of similar size in Rajasthan or Vidarbha is unfair. The size of holdings in distressed areas should be much bigger,' he said. Swaminathan said farmers in irrigated areas who used advanced methods had access to credit much in excess to what farmers in distressed areas were able to garner. Budget can't be challenged in court: SC Even before the applause for a Budget
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National status will fetch it funds
A proposal to include the Calcutta wetlands in the list of waterbodies of national importance will protect it from real estate developers as well as facilitate funds for its conservation
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Small towns Big mess
India's urban environment is a ghastly cocktail of prosperity, poverty and pollution. A study of eight towns moving towards the precipice of disaster
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Rising trend
Right from the "60s, DDT resistance of the malaria parasite host, Anopheles culicifacies, was detected in Gujarat. It was a rising trend. Another important vector, A stephensi, became so rugged that
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Research in S&T hindered by high cost of journals
The number of international science and technology journals available in Indian institutions has drastically and his may affect research adversity
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Beneficial lessons
one of the pressing issues of this century is the ways and means to combat rampant pollution. Every country has formulated different policies to control the environmental damage. The book,
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Troubled history
Local communities have always been stuck in no man s land in the US
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No gas? Try coconut oil
Pacific island nations want to popularise the use of coconut oil as a fuel instead of the increasingly expensive petroleum products. This was revealed at a recent un conference on small islands,
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Partial rollback in LPG hike, no relief for diesel
New Delhi: Cooking gas prices will go up by Rs 27.50 per cylinder, instead of the Rs 40 hike proposed in the Delhi budget. Bowing to popular sentiment, the city government went into rollback mode on Monday, waiving the 5% value added tax on LPG. Also exempted from VAT were CNG, tea, coffee and some other items, whose prices will now remain unchanged.
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Sidelining sanitation
BURDENED by repayment of its enormous external debt, the Peruvian government has been forced to cut down its budgeting for health and sanitation facilities, even though a cholera epidemic claimed
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Raw deal
For a country whose environment has borne the brunt of decades of war and has been sorely neglected by the erstwhile dictatorial regime, the us $1 million sanctioned by the authorities to bring
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AIDS crisis
AIDS has reached crisis point in Thailand, prompting the government to increase its HIV-prevention budget by L5 million. An NGO study predicts that by 2000, 2.4 million Thais -- out of 53 million --
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Increasing forest cover
That s what a new government project aims to do <br>