Paul J Crutzen received the 1995 Chemistry Nobel prize for showing that nitrogen oxides react catalytically with ozone, thus accelerating the rate of reduction of the atmospheric ozone content.
in 1933, Adolf Hitler met with the car baron Ferdinand Porsche to discuss the idea of a car that could carry 5 people, cruise up to 40 km an hour, return around 12 km a litre, and cost only 1,000
Documentary
Now that the jury is out on the very real threat of climate change, we must focus on what needs to be done. The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ipcc should make
it is clear that the Delhi Master Plan has been written by lobbies of traders that don't want their commercial establishments operating out of residential areas to be sealed, as ordered by the
in may 2004, India had a new government at the Centre. Bangalore and Hyderabad, the two boroughs of shining India, saw their chief ministers eat humble pie at the hustings. An India not very often
THE centre's commitment to targets stipulated by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003, threatens to set it on a collision course with states. The matter at hand is funding social
Every society must understand how the excreta it produces is managed. It teaches us many things about water, about waste, about technologies to clean, economics and politics: of who is subsidised to defecate in our societies. But, most importantly, it teaches us humility. We know so little about our own world.
The Indian Science Congress like its political counterpart, the Indian National Congress owes its origin to a British initiative. In 1914 two British chemists J L Simonsen and P S MacMahon
Riddle of the Ridley and Lai Lai the Baby Elephant
The Crack in the Centre of the World, America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
inter-state water conflicts have become the stock-in-trade of Indian politics. They are easy matter for politicians and technocrats to milk. The disputes most often end up in the Supreme Court with
the Indian middle class has come of age. Quite literally so. The motor car, that epitome of middle class aspirations, is no longer a dream. Of course, that automobile is also not the lumbering
the issue of rights over and the management of forestland, never less than contentious, has triggered off another round of unseemly bickering
Intellectualising poverty
ADMINISTRATORS of urban water facilities in India often adopt a parochial view. The water suppliers discourage measures such as rainwater harvesting, arguing that it reduces their revenue by cutting
AT ITS inception in the 1830s, the photograph was regarded "the pencil of nature'. Photographic images were perceived as direct and unmediated transcriptions of reality. Those were the halcyon days
ever since India recognised the need for smaller administrative units by breaking up big states, beginning with the linguistic reorganisation of 1956, the clamour for a wider process of
Asbestos, agribusiness get a leg up
