Order of the High Court of Uttarakhand (WPPIL No. 202 OF 2024 with WPPIL NO.174 OF 2024) in the matter of mining operations in Bageshwar district, Uttarakhand. The order was passed by the Chief Justice of Uttarakhand High Court Guhanathan Narendar and Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari. In compliance with the …
The Sunsari-Morang irrigation project in Nepal has been mired in a corruption controversy. It is alleged that money granted for setting up the infrastructure of the project has been embezzled. Parliamentarian Lal Babu Pandit, representing constituency 3 of Morang district, has levelled these charges after seeing the poor quality of …
The 2000 monsoon didn’t keep its date with Dulaiben, 60, resident of Thoridi village in Amreli district of Gujarat. Her eyes stare down the road in the hope of the water tanker that brings 5,000 litres of water for the 600 residents once every week. Her two sons migrated to …
The Employment Guarantee Scheme ( egs ) of Maharash tra is said to be the only one in the world that guaran tees employment on demand. This was for the first time an employment generation programme was conceived to create productive works at the village level. The absence of social …
During the 1999-2000 drought, Down To Earth ( dte ) reported that five villages in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh had enough water during the drought because of the water conservation activities they had undertaken. dte revisited these villages, reeling under the second successive drought. Unlike last year, some of these …
An analysis of the government's failure at drought relief shows some clear loopholes that are not very difficult to plug for a government that is worried about its political future. The most important thing is to plan decentralised, village-level institutions to both manage drought relief and come up with strategic …
The biggest hurdle in providing the much-needed drought relief is corruption in the government machi nery. Rajasthan has spent almost Rs 6,500 crore on drought relief works like employment generation, fodder distribution and drinking water facilities in the past 45 years. Another Rs 628 crore has been spent in the …
the Madhya Pradesh government would like to forget it. The residents of Dewas district, however, will remember it for the rest of their lives. Four people were killed in a confrontation between the administration and the tribal people at Mehendikheda village, about 100 km from the district headquarters of Dewas, …
the Union ministry of environment and forests has proposed to set up a forest development agency on the lines of district rural development authority ( drda ). Funds from the Centre for Forests and Wildlife Conservation and afforestation programmes will be provided through the agency instead of the state governments. …
the Bihar government has been spending over Rs 2.22 crore annually for 17 years on the salary of those employed in its small pox eradication programme though the world was declared free from the disease in 1984. The staff of the programme is getting salary for sitting idle, according to …
The Union government has decided to implement schemes similar to the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) for 23 new rivers in 10 states, proving that it has learnt little from the poor implementation of the river cleaning programmes launched in the past (see
There was and still is a lot India can learn from Nepal. Nepal's success in increasing power availability in remote areas through community participation and micro-hydel schemes is laudable. Therefore it doesn't make sense that Nepal is putting an end to an enlightened Community Forest Management Programme and trying to …
the Madhya Pradesh government has dissolved the state pollution control board after its chairperson V K Jain was arrested by the Lok Ayukta (la), an autonomous watchdog body. The la says that several documents in its possession reveal that Jain gave no objection certificates to several polluting industries, including distilleries, …
the Central Pollution Control Board's (cpcb) effort to come out with a new water quality reviewing criteria after a gap of 20 years has proved futile. Most of the states' representatives felt it was not important. The cpcb had organised a workshop for this purpose on February 19-20, 2001, but …
If you saw tv programmes or read newspapers on the latest budget, you would have thought it is only for business leaders. The manner in which business editors and columnists went overboard to seek the response of the corporate community to Yashwant Sinha's latest hat-trick of budgetary numbers shows a …
The Union ministry of surface transport (most) frames vehicular emission norms and notifies certification procedures for vehicles, as per the Central Motors Vehicles Act (cmva). The emission norms for converted cng buses were notified on February 9, 2000, more than one and half years after the sc order of July …
If the Delhi Transport Corporation and the State Transport Authority do not increase the number of their buses, why should we increase capacity for supply? If I order equipment worth several crore rupees without there being adequate number of buses, how would I answer to my superiors?' Thus Rajiv Sharma, …
In complete mockery of its very title, the Union ministry of environment and forests (mef) has shown no interest in pushing for implementation of the cng order despite all the power at its disposal. mef is only too happy with the national emission standards, which are nothing more than the …
