Traditional curative systems like ayurveda, homoeopathy, acupuncture… are being revived as alternative medicine. But in India and the Orient, the original homes of some of the most effective alternative medical systems in the world, these are reduced to
Late last year, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Indian Railways (IR) castigated the for squandering money on import deals which would not fully satisfy India"s needs for indigenisation of technology. Down To Earth discovered that though el
The tribal world view that humans can regenerate forests, but not create them, may resolve problems and failures which stalk forest management policies of the government
The wise use of the wonderous sewan grass is fast being hedged out by water intensive agriculture, opening up a thorny issue
Once hailed as a boon to health, chlorine is now charged with being carcinogenic, maiming the immune and the reproductive systems.
Blind terror: 80 per cent of the world's sightless are in the developing world, and the number will double by the turn of the century. Carl Kupfer is the director of the National Eye Institute, Betheseda, USA. He tells the author that blindness is not onl
A timeless dream: eternal youth, unblemished by illness. The search for the font of immortality has taken a late 20th century turn into what seems like fantasy science. The basis of this search is the belief that if death cannot be staved off forever, hum
Ten winters since methyl isocyanate exhaled history"s deadliest industrial disaster on Bhopal, action on toxicity remains agonisingly inadequate. India needs the technical knowledge of the Western world. Union Carbide recently made available its vast scie
European environmentalists tackle Third World concerns of irresponsible overconsumption by northern countries
...as the case of Betwa proves. Tales which have the power to move a whole town in Madhya Pradesh and send the notoriously slothful official machinery into a whirligig of activity. It is all about a people’s struggle to save the highly polluted Betwa rive
The anachronistic, and explosive, colonial formula of exploiting forests by denying the forest people their rights is still being followed to the letter by underdeveloped Indian administrators in the Dangs, Gujarat"s boondocks tribal belt
Several Western nations have decided to stipulate high environmental standards for the goods they import. The step demands the substitution of several chemicals deemed harmful with ecologically benign ones, and suitable technological modifications an e
A recent congress highlighted the relevance of people oriented science and technology such as the management of water, forests and agriculture.
HIV bringsscience down on its knees
Many economists now argue that nature cannot be the provider of a perpetual free lunch. It's time to account for natural resource degradation while drawing up balance sheets
Complex systems of preserving biodiversity, evolved over centuries, have not saved traditional communities living in bio rich areas like India from poverty. Only if India starts patenting its germplasm can it compensate those of its communities which have
For centuries, the Dutch have been trying to keep their heads over water by barricading out the sea and the rivers. But there comes a point when the environment has to be considered when reclaiming land and strengthening dykes
Thousands of industrial units in parts of Haryana are clandestinely discarding untreated effluents into aquifers, irreversibly damaging groundwater.
UNCED has thrown into sharp focus all matters environmental international industry, quick to Catch on to now trends, has started branding its technologies environment friendly and in some cases, started looking for less wasteful ways
Tissue taken from aborted foetuses and implanted into the bodies of patients suffering from several incurable diseases has shown encouraging results
