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 …
THERE IS A missing link that keeps the work of our scientists very insulated. It keeps their work from reaching potential beneficiaries. These are educated people who ought to know. They visit Delhi regularly from areas where such work could be of use but are totally unaware of what is …
THE RECENT meeting of non-government organisations (NGOs) at Udaipur had an interesting agenda: how to evolve a way to deal with the drought in the light of the new economic policy. But they found the subject so complex that they concluded that more meetings of the kind were needed and …
JHARKHAND stretches from Bankura district in West Bengal to Surguja in Madhya Pradesh; and from Santhal Parganas of Bihar to Sambhalpur in Orissa. Approximately 1,87,646 sq km in area, it has a population of 30.5 million according to the 1981 census. Adivasis constitute 30 per cent of the population, while …
THE crowd gasps as a sadhu pierces his tongue with a trishul. Chants of awed reverence go up as a baba lights the hawan kunda (sacrificial pyre) with super-natural powers and another passes a flaming torch over his body. It is to expose such miracles and to promote scientific awareness …
RAGHUNATHPUR is a large village of 350 households in the Chanho block of Ranchi district. It lies 55 km from Ranchi on the road to Lohardagga. Though Oraons comprise the majority of the population, this multi-religious village has many non-tribals as well. Being an Oraon village, it was governed by …
"EARTHQUAKES don't kill, buildings do," says John Beynon, principal architect at UNESCO's regional office in Bangkok. Today, people are shifting to "killer buildings" as they give up their traditional building technologies in favour of modern designs and materials. This disastrous transformation has taken place not just in Garhwal, but idso …
JHARKHAND today is closer to reality than it has ever been. This summer saw Jharkhand leaders sweat it out in Delhi while waiting for cabinet committee meetings to decide the issue. They don"t expect the Centre to grant statehood right away. A senior leader puts it this way, "We will …
MAPPING of local natural resources by the villagers is an experiment being tried out by three Kerala organisations: the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) and the Kerala State Land Use Board (KSLUB). Economic growth is unsustainable unless the exploitation of natural resources is …
JUST 55 seconds in duration, it left 1,000 people dead. The earthquake, measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale, which devastated the hills of Uttarkashi, Tehri Garhwal and Chamoli districts in UP last October, also left 20 per cent of the houses in the region totally destroyed or severely damaged. What …
TWENTY years after the women of UP's Chamoli district hugged trees to save them from contractors' axes, the echoes of the call "Chipko" still ring in the district's hills. With new challenges to be met, the women's fight to preserve the Himalayan ecology continues. The Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal, which …
CLOSE on the heels of the bitter land wars in the West Asia comes the bitter conflict over water. Israel and the West Bank Palestinians are at odds over scarce water; its Arab neighbours - Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria all contend that they have considerable legal rights to the …
WITH more and more local bodies showing a red bottomline, some of the core urban services may soon be up for grabs, if entrepreneurs are willing to take them on. The sectors under debate include water supply, garbage collection, sewage management and solid waste disposal, sanitation treatment plants and even …
AN entirely new breed of detectives has come up in the USA - the forensic entomologists. Detectives were stumped at the discovery of a 34-year-old man's decomposing body,'with a bullet through his neck, in a Washington house completely locked from inside and with no sign of the killer weapon. Till …
"IF the HIV virus spreads through the general population in India, it will be through blood and not, sexual transmission." says P N Talwar, director of the National Institute of Immunology. However, according to the new strategy document of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Global Programme on AIDS (GPA), while …
RISING sea levels and drowning areas is one of the much publicised consequences of global waarming - in fact, sea levels do rise, the effect on island countries like the Maldives and those with long coast lines like India and Bangladesh could be catastrophic. However, according to P K Daformer …
FOUR buses of the Chola Roadways Corporation at Nagapattinam in the coastal district of Thanjavur are different from the rest of the fleet. They are fueled by a half-and-half mix of compressed natural gas (CNG) and diesel. The pilot project is the first of its kind in the country. India …
LARGESCALE use of CNG as an automotive fuel can give breathing space to people in the heavily-polluted metropolitan cities of India. Motor vehicles are said to be responsible for 60 per cent of the total pollution load in Bombay, some 12,000 tonnes of pollutants daily, including 40 tonnes of lead. …
AN octopus can learn tasks simply by watching other octopuses at work. This observation has surprised researchers who believed such mental capacities to be the sale preserve of higher vertebrates like mammals. The octopus belongs to the family of molluscs which are invertebrate. Research on Octopus vulgarid, the common octopus …
FOR the first time possibly since independence, the forest cover in India has recorded an increase. The green cover has gone up from 19.47 per cent to 19.49 per cent, with an annual incremental growth of- 28,000 ha, says the latest issue of The State of Forest Report, prepared by …
WHILE the developed world gears up to phase out ozone depleting gases by AD 2000, Mafatlal's Navin Fluorine Industries has set up India's first halon-1211 manufacturing plant, in Surat. Halons are major ozone destroyers. Under the Montreal Protocol, industrialised counti-les have agreed to phase out ozone-depleting gases completely by AD …
