Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of News Item titled "2 killed in blast at illegal cracker unit in Thanjavur appearing in The Hindu dated 19.05.2025". The application is registered suo-motu on the basis of the news item titled 2 killed in blast at illegal cracker unit …
THE JOINT sector automobile manufacturer, Maruti Udyog Limited (MUL), launched its latest model with much fanfare in May. However, Alto, the version earmarked for European markets has pollution control features that are deemed futuristic for India. Alto has engines that will run on unleaded petrol. It also incorporates catalytic converters, …
Indian industrialists will now have few excuses for not undertaking Pollution control measures: the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) has offered Rs 150 crore as assistance to the most polluting industries. About 40 manufacturers of caustic soda, chlorine and paper, which ICICI says are the worst polluters, …
SHAH JAHAN'S dream in marble is at greater risk from pollution today than two decades ago, when protest over damage to the Taj Mahal was at its peak. But even after 20 years, experts are still at odds on how serious is the threat to what is arguably the world's …
THIRD World Network (TWN), a Malaysia-based environment group, has voiced its concern over some basic issues in USA's controversial interpretative statement of the Biodiversity Convention, which US President Bill Clinton has agreed to sign (Down To Earth, June 15, 1993). The US interpretation says, "Private parties (read companies) should have …
THE RADICAL Khmer Rouge has won enough seats in the May 1993 Cambodian elections to pose a definite threat to the newly elected Norodom Sihanouk government. But to sustain its success, the Khmer Rouge has ensure its teak trade with Thailand - a major source of its income - gets …
While the Uttar Pradesh carpet industry is under increasing pressure to ban child labour, young children in Pali in Rajasthan continue to work in appalling conditions in the 1,000-odd dye and print industries. Children screen-print sarees, bedsheets and bed covers. Factory owner Sunil Chaubra admits, "We prefer to hire children …
Why is the Central Groundwater Board unable to monitor sub-soil water pollution? The reason is certainly not original: India's groundwater inspection authority, with a 5,300-strong staff, claims it needs about 40 more people before it can undertake a study of the 17 critically polluted industrial estates. The ministry of environment …
INDUSTRY is poised to make the biggest state-sponsored land grab. The ministry for rural development (MRD), which is reportedly facing a financial crunch, is considering asking state governments to take "steps that will enable the long lease of government wastelands to industry." However, V B Eswaran, former director of the …
ALL THROUGH the second half of the 20th century, whenever Western governments have seen their industries lagging behind globally, they have resorted to updating their technology policies. The result has been that technology strategies became the key to economic growth not only in the US and in several European nations, …
NOW THAT Hiroshi Nakajima has been confirmed as director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), at the organisation's annual general assembly held in early May, he has to start setting his house in order -- a formidable task by all accounts. At the WHO annual general assembly, 93 countries voted …
"OUR ANGER has grown to its highest level," fumed Kazuo Shima, the Japanese delegate to the annual general meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), after Tokyo's attempts at yen diplomacy failed to prevent an extension of the global ban on commercial whaling (Down To Earth, April 30, 1993). The …
FINANCING sustainable development, says the 41-member Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), will be the most important issue to be taken up by the 1994 global conference on the development of these states. US and European Community representatives noted, despite their "Rio rhetoric", they would accept mention of only the …
GIVEN Doordarshan's current preoccupation with movies for entertainment, it seems to have cheerfully tossed science and environment programmes out through the window. Nothing notable has been shown on the small screen in recent months except for a film on the Narmada dam, already reviewed in this column. Fortunately, Star Plus …
FOR THE first time in many years, Ethiopian leaders are talking of self-sufficiency in food, buoyed by UN forecasts of a record harvest of 7.7 million tonnes of cereals and pulses this year. Such a crop would reduce the country's need for food aid by 50 per cent. The world …
TROPICAL timber-producing countries insist temperate forests must be included in any accord reached to replace the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) when it expires next year. Their demand was made at a meeting of timber-producing and -consuming countries held in Geneva recently, even as Bruno Manser, a Swiss anthropologist, staged …
EVERYONE agrees that the greatest achievement of the world's largest-ever environment conference -- at Rio last year -- was the establishment of the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) to monitor environmental degradation. But how effective the 53-member CSD, scheduled to hold its first meeting on June 14, will be is …
AS HEAD of the President's task force on national health-care reform in USA, Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton, has her job cut out for her. A majority of Americans want quality health care at a lower cost, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, and they …
TWO HUNDRED years ago, Thomas Malthus had asked at what point man's population would exceed his means of subsistence. The world's population then had not reached 1 billion. Today, a year before the population conference in Cairo, the total number of people in the world is fast approaching 5.5 billion. …
WHEN STATE governor B R Bhagat cancelled plans for two major cement plants and banned limestone mining near main roads and tourist sites, he warned, "No one will be allowed to play with the ecology of the environmentally fragile state of Himachal Pradesh." Now, the environment has become a political …
IN 1987 Chet Singh Chauhan and a group of residents from Sangraha, a village in Sirmaur district, filed suit demanding the closure of the V K Walia limestone mines near the village. They accused of Walia of causing severe environmental damage because of unscientific mining operations: "Haphazard mining was not …
