Judgment of the Supreme Court in the matter of In Re: Zudpi Jungle Lands. A batch of applications involved a peculiar issue concerning the situation prevailing in the six districts of eastern Vidarbha region namely Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. The issue pertains to the status of the …
Researchers at the Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow have successfully used a crude extract from the plant baruri (Crataeva nurvala) to dissolve stones in bladder and kidney. G K Patnaik of CDRI's Centre for Advanced Pharmacological Research on Traditional Remedies says lupeol can be extracted from baruri and used …
Only one per cent of the world's bacteria -- those that can be cultured in the lab -- are known, but molecular techniques pioneered by the Agricultural and Food Research Council (AFRC) in Britain will enable researchers to identify and classify bacteria into reliable genetic groupings. This will provide a …
THE ORISSA government, in direct violation of a Central order, has allowed the Tatas to continue work on the Chilka Aquatic Project. In early June, the minister of state for environment and forests, Kamal Nath, had directed the state government not to proceed with the prawn culture project until the …
Medical researchers at the University of Arkansas have found a way to reduce dramatically the time needed to diagnose tuberculosis. The new method, which involves analysing genetic material found in tuberculosis cells, will enable laboratories to diagnose TB in just 36 hours, instead of upto four weeks that it takes …
THE NATIONAL Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, has prepared terminology for their science in eight Indian languages. About 400 terms have been selected and their equivalents prepared in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu. The aim of this exercise is to facilitate communication between people speaking the same …
HINDUSTAN Machine Tools is in the process of fabricating three 23 ft X 11 ft and 30 20 ft X 8 ft population clocks that will indicate, along with the time, the increase in size of the population at each point of time. The government, which is acquiring the clocks …
WHILE contaminated water has occupied centrestage in Udaipur for many years, the Pesticides India plant has been insidiously emitting odorous gases for almost as long. The plant manufactures pesticides, including phorate, all of which are highly toxic. While officials at the plant claim they have taken all possible precautions to …
THE CAMPAIGN against changes in India's patent, science and investment laws, to bring them in line with the draft proposals of Arthur Dunkel, director-general of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), will now move to the legislatures and the courts. Formulated by the Azadi Bachao Andolan (ABA), a …
WAS ROBERT C Gallo guilty, along with his colleagues at the US National Institute of Health, of scientific misconduct for their conduct and reporting of the crucial experiments that led to the development of a diagnostic blood test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS? No, says the NIH finally, …
INDIAN VILLAGERS don't just pick up any cow-pat they find. Even this lowly excrement, so prominently strewn around, is governed by a complex set of ownership rules in rural India, and is not to be collected and used by anybody. It all depends on local village rules, on who is …
WHEN WITH 'big brother' presumption, the Centre decided to 'help' the states of Haryana and Rajasthan regulate their industrial development, and arrest the adverse effect of this development on the Aravallis, it stirred up a hornet's nest, with development and the states on one side and environment and the Centre …
BUILDERS in Delhi are in a bind. The Supreme Court order to close down stone-crushing units around the Capital has hiked structural costs by 10-15 per cent. The Aravalli notification has drastically cut down prime land they have been opening up in Gurgaon, where land prices are less than a …
PARTICLE physicists scanning the cosmos for the slippery neutrino, claim once again to have established that it has a mass. Anthony Turkevich of the University of Chicago and his collaborators have published a study claiming to have uncovered "another independent line of evidence pointing towards neutrinos having mass." Predictably, this …
THE NATION'S malaria control authorities are increasingly resorting to a method introduced by the British as far back as 1908 to check the disease: rearing fish that feed on mosquito larvae. The problem they face is that after a sharp decline in malaria from 6.46 million cases in the mid-70s …
THE MAN who presided over one of the world's largest head-counting exercises -- the 1991 Indian census -- is soft-spoken Amulya Ratna Nanda, registrar-general and census commissioner. The 1991 census, the fifth in independent India, broke new ground in many ways. When the figures finally come in over the next …
THE PRIME Minister needs to be congratulated for his decision to set up a department exclusively in charge of wasteland afforestation. He shifted the charge from the ministry of forests and environment to the ministry of rural development, leaving several officials tongue-tied. If this step lends greater importance to the …
IT IS IRONIC that during the same week in June in which the World Bank emerged from Rio as the major funding mechanism to clean up the world's environment and implement Agenda 21, the Morse report revealed to the world the chronic institutional failures of the bank to promote environmentally …
THE MORSE committee has asked the World Bank to step back from the Sardar Sarovar project. Whether the bank complies or not, the committee has undoubtedly delivered a resounding indictment of all those involved in the project -- from the governments of Gujarat and India to the mighty World Bank. …
SOMEWHERE in the Ayodhya hills of Bengal's Purulia district, a scorpion stung the wits out of me. My adivasi companion, Sukhchand, still in his teens, rubbed a poultice made up of some leaves on the bite and it brought instant relief. I had occasion to remember Sukhchand decades later when …
THE ENGLISH say that the month of March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. The same may be said about the much awaited Morse Report. The findings are strong and declare that all is definitely NOT well with the SSP. The recommendations are, to put …
