Global megatrends such as income inequality, climate change, demographic shifts, technological progress, and urbanisation are shaping the future of societies. Yet, their quantitative impacts on development are neither well understood nor established. This paper examines the individual and combined effects of these global forces on poverty, using both cross-section and …
on october 18, the Supreme Court ( sc ) cleared the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Project ( ssp ) dam on the Narmada River. Construction had been stayed in 1994 following a public interest petition by the Narmada Bachao Andolan ( nba ), which the court has now dismissed. …
the Clinton administration has proposed new rules to protect environmentally sensitive wetlands from rash development. The new rules, to be implemented after a 60-day period of public comment, would make the present regulations more comprehensive regarding what kind of wetlands development requires an environmental impact review by the government. The …
Killer, brigand, elephant poacher, sandalwood smuggler, forest goon, Call him what you will but Veerappan - the grandson of a Mettur Dam oustee remains a creature of the law. The media has discussed the abduction of Kannada thespian Rajkumar by the brigand Veerappan ad nauseum but it has missed a …
the C P Ramaswamy Iyer Memorial Park in Nagercoil, the district headquarters of Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, is under threat from more quarters than can be imagined. The park is 1.8-hectares park is right in the heart of the city and was inaugurated on December 19, 1943, to commemorate the 60th …
the high cost of drugs to fight hiv/aids in developing countries was a recurring theme at the 13th International aids conference held in Durban, South Africa, in the second week of July. The official opening ceremony was preceded by a protest march of several thousand people organised by the Treatment …
The United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) human development report for 2000 has for the first time linked human rights to human development, particularly in the poverty eradication sector. "Human rights is not, as has sometimes been argued, a reward of development. Rather they are critical to achieving it," says Mark …
india's overall health care system performance has helped the country to the 112th position among World Health Organisation members, according to the World Health Report 2000 released in the latter part of June. India stands 133rd on the basis of per capita expenditure in the field of health. With these …
a group of Maoist Communist Centre (mcc) extremists recently abducted a forester from the Hazaribagh National Park in Bihar. The officer was released after being subjected to mental torture for six hours by the mcc. The forester had committed the cardinal error of arresting a local person for taking away …
WITH his newborn in his arms, 30-year-old Pooranmal stands helplessly outside Jaipur's J K Loan Hospital. The doctors have refused to operate upon his son. "There is no hope. They say my child is not going to live for long,' he says. The child was born on February 25, 2000, …
India is fast becoming the land of superlatives. For all the wrong reasons, of course. Be it August 15, 1999 (UN prediction), or May 11, 2000 (government of India estimates), the nation has reached the inevitable mark. At the time of Independence, the country's population was as low as 350 …
THE mythical clock has struck. A billion and ticking at the rate of 29 per minute, 1790 per hour... The rise in human numbers is accompanied by a host of problems. Knowledge of the carrying capacity of India's lands is extremely limited. There is no worthwhile study covering even the …
Aid workers have warned of an impending humanitarian crisis in the flood-affected areas of Mozambique. After weeks of flooding from torrential rain that killed 67 people and displaced 21,000, the cyclone Eline lashed the country on February 22 making matters worse. According to Marielise Berg-Sonne, a Red Cross official, as …
the growing livelihood insecurity that the masses face due to depletion and degradation of environmental resources, population explosion, unemployment and poverty have marked the end of the 20th century. The development sector involved in contesting these issues at the local level has raised more questions than answers. The sector finds …
How does pollution affect the poor? In the developed countries, it is not the poor who are responsible for environmental problems. It is the richer class which owns more than one car per family, who dump their waste in the neighbourhood. Therefore, the rich are enjoying themselves at the expense …
seven years after the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where countries around the world vowed to stop desertification, officials gathered in another Brazilian city of Recife to assess local as well as global regeneration measures undertaken so far. More than 150 countries signed the Recife Initiative, …
in the recently-concluded World Trade Organisation meet in Seattle, usa, countries fought over a variety of trade-related issues, including genetically-modified (gm) foods. Ironically, a few days before the meet, one of the biggest manufacturers of gm foods, Monsanto, won an important court case in uk. Monsanto, a us-based biotech company, …