Reply by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in compliance to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order dated January 21, 2024 in the matter of ‘News item titled “Feeling anxious? Toxic air could be to blame” appearing in Times of India dated 10.10.2023’. NGT had directed CPCB to file a …
Microsoft founder Bill Gates' “ultimate dream” is low-cost toilets. And to achieve this, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will host the world's best scientists and engineers in Seattle in the United States in August to design cheap, dry toilets. This public health innovation is his “ultimate dream” though it …
It is a government agency that was set up specially to fund non-profits working on rural development. But of late the Council for People’s Action and Advancement of Rural Technology (CAPART) has been plagued by allegations of corruption and inefficiency. After a few failed attempts to reform CAPART, the government …
In 1905, Sir William Osler, the most influential physician of his time, stepped down from the medical faculty of Johns Hopkins University at the age of 55. At his farewell, he emphasized that the “effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of 25 and 40—these …
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plans to increase the government's R&D; spending and create incentives for the private sector to increase spending on science and technology as well.
Despite the steady growth of India’s farm sector in the past five years, the country has not been able to utilise fully the many scientific achievements in the agriculture sector, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday. “It represents failure of the system,” Singh said while speaking at the Golden …
Preparations for the Rio+20 United Nations conference on sustainable development have begun, but the first round of preparatory meetings did not address important issues such as sustainable resource use, production and consumption.
The design of overhead lines (new lines, uprating or refurbishment) in the deregulated environment is critical to the competiveness and profitability of the utility company. Should, for example, the design limit the power transfer to levels, which prohibit sales of MW at peak periods, the losses can be enormous. This …
The Indian economy has been growing at 8% during the last decade. The service sector has contributed immensely to this growth and continues to grab a large share of the gross domestic product (GDP). However, the agricultural sector is still the biggest employer in India and supports the livelihood of …
Creativity or out-of-the-box thinking is evenly distributed in all societies in the world. On that count rural India should be a major source of creative minds that has remained untapped. Due to our city-centric policies, it may take decades before modern science and technology (S&T;) reaches rural India. Meanwhile the …
This paper reports on the availability, use and information seeking behaviour of a farming community with specific reference to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It fills a research gap by examining what people do with a medium when they have access to it, rather than looking at barriers surrounding the …
This article studies the development of the Non-Pesticidal Management Project (NPM) that emerged in the late 1980s in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district of the semi-arid region Telengana as a response to accumulating agrarian distress, when chemical pesticides did not help to counter massive pest infestations.
Poor access to appropriate technologies due to difficult topographies and tough mountain conditions is one of the major causes of poverty, drudgery and natural resources degradation not only in the Indian Central Himalaya, but also in other parts of the Hindu-Kush Himalaya. Of late, deve- lopment planners have realized the …
Of all the words that have been coupled with innovation, “frugal” must rank as the most intriguing—and it is an Indian invention. “Frugal innovation” is a term coined by the Planning Commission, which proffers it as a radical solution to finding more appropriate processes and products to tackle the development …
If one were to compare steel consumption figures, Indians lag far behind the rest of the world. Against the world average of 215 kg, per person steel consumption in India is just 50 kg a year. This consumption gap is likely to reduce in coming years. With rapid economic growth, …
In Madina village, outside Accra, Ghana, children tease each other about whose urine has a redder color. Apart from being strikingly thin, they look healthy. Yet they could be affected by Schistosoma haematobium, a parasitic disease common in Africa, where local prevalence rates can exceed 50%. Early diagnosis ensures inexpensive …
We need a new economy that encourages entrepreneurs to bring to the market innovations inspired by the way ecosystems work and modelled on blue earth, says Gunter Pauli.
Gravity makes water run downhill, so people and communities living in mountainous areas often have more difficulties in accessing sufficient water. As this example from the Philippines shows, simple technologies can be a great help
Apair of bullocks operating an iron contraption is a big draw at Melkama village in Indore district. The brainchild of Vinod Parashar, a scientist at Shri Govindram Seksaria Institute of Technology and Science in Indore, the device has an unwieldy name, ‘Linkage-based input-output shaft’. But don’t go by the sound …
There is something about India’s government machinery that makes it impervious to simple, low-cost solutions. It spends hundreds of crores of rupees to make available drinking water. The money, it is widely known, does not trickle down to villages that need potable water. The government knows it cannot achieve its …
