Two seminal books, John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York’s The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth and John Bellamy Foster’s The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet suggest that the rift between humanity and nature must be analysed in its intertwining with other kinds of alienation, …
imagine what A P J Abdul Kalam would be doing today had he not been making Prithvi and Agni . He would, in that case, be certainly mediating in a sufi shrine in some remote corner of India or doing yoga with some hoary sadhus in the Himalaya. Nuclear warhead …
consider this. A small sleepy town on the top of a hill in the north of Nagaland. The mention of the town's name is met by blank looks for it is isolated not only geographically, but also from civilisation. None of the modern means of communication exists and, to top …
What do Digvijay Singh, Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kumar Chamling have in common? A simple answer would be that they are all chief ministers. But they have more in common than just that. Some time back, in February to be precise, we put all three on the cover of Down …
pied-piper of Saurashtra, rainmaker, one-man army, messiah. Revered by villagers, Shamjibhai Jadavbhai Antala, 62, has been given many such names. He has, in more than one way, accomplished the impossible in a land with a history of severe water scarcity, hostile climate and rocky topography. A resident of Dhoraji, a …
When K A Rahman succumbed to cancer on January 18, the river Chaliyar was orphaned and north Kerala villages lost its valiant sentinel. For Rahman had left the country's longest environmental battle unfinished. Hours before his death, he left a message. He asked each one of us (all over the …
that electoral politics and the environment do not mix well in India is a foregone conclusion. Lost in the maze of religion, casteism and regionalism, our politicians have no incentive to draw up plans to improve the natural environment, make promises based on these plans, fulfil those promises, and make …
" environment audit is a form of social audit which the corporate sector has to accept in order to qualify as good corporate citizens,' said former Union finance minister Manmohan Singh, while formally releasing the environmental ratings of 28 pulp and paper mills on July 28. The first of its …
On August 1, 1999, social activist Anna Hazare began a maun vrat (silent fast) at Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra against the delay in action against officials allegedly involved in the Rs 32.66 crore drought scandal. He also alleged that there has been a cover-up at the ministry level on the …
it was only a few years ago, after Amartya Sen had moved to Harvard from Oxford, with highly regarded contributions in development economics, that the fraternity also had already begun to regard him as a potential Nobel Prize winner. Since then, he had moved from his earlier fields to the …
retribution caught up with former Maharashtra minister Baban Gholap when officials of Maharashtra's anti-corruption cell raided numerous residential premises and a farmhouse owned by him on July 1. Just a year ago, noted Gandhian and social activist Anna Hazare had levelled corruption charges against Gholap. At that time, the minister …
I read your piece on Amartya Sen with great interest. I, too, have some reservations on the stand taken by the Nobel laureate. As an economist schooled in the uk and the us , Sen is most likely to ignore poverty's ecological dimensions. But can the people working to alleviate …
The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences awarded the 1998 Nobel prize for economics to Amartya Sen. Sen's pioneering work in measuring poverty and inequality and probing the reasons for the economic famines in the Third World countries won him the esteemed pri2e. He became the sixth Indian to win a …
