Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
THE CHINGUDI (prawn) mania may have engulfed Chilika and its catchments only recently, but state government records show the fish trade started in the 1930s and fish from the lake was exported as far as Calcutta during the World War II. The first known attempt at brackish-water culture was made …
• State legislature should decide the powers of gram sabhas. • All states must have panchayats at the village level. But state legislatures can decide if they want panchayats also at the intermediate (block, taluka etc) and district levels. • All seats in village panchayats and intermediate panchayats shall be …
THE traditional gharat (water wheel) has caught the technologist's eye and deceptively simple modifications to its design have made it at least 40 per cent more efficient and also enlarged its capability so that it can power several machines simultaneously. The gharat, in use for centuries in the Himalayan region, …
• State legislatures can decide the composition of municipalities. • State legislatures can decide whether they want committees at the ward level or other levels within a municipal area. • The state legislatures will decide the power and authority they want to give municipalities. • Seats will be reserved for …
THE GOOD old radio is getting set to replace an entire record library. Using digital audio broadcasting, as against the present analog system of transmission, listeners will be able to tune in from a very large number of programmes and make their own high quality digital recordings from the hi-tech …
BECAUSE irrigation water costs so little in India, it is frequently misused and wasted. Some water management experts now recommend that its disciplined consumption can be ensured by increasing the rates paid by farmers. There is evidence to suggest that Indian farmers are willing to pay much higher water rates …
THE AVERAGE height of the Himalaya was once much higher, the Ganga flowed much further north along the foothills and the Indus flowed east into the Ganga. All this changed about two million years ago -- not all that long ago in geological time. In the early 20th century, German …
THE WORLD Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has gone on record officially that oilwell fires in Kuwait have had no global effect on the atmosphere. At WMO's recent meeting in Geneva with representatives of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) scientific papers were presented that showed the massive amounts of carbon and other …
A REASON for the unabated and heavy migration into Delhi lies in the highly subsidised quality of life it provides. Delhi residents benefit from subsidies on water, power, milk, transport and services. Amitabh Kundu of the School of Social Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University calculates that the subsidy enjoyed …
THE HIMALAYAN-Tibetan rivers have been found to be a major source of marine uranium and scientists estimate they contribute about 3,000 tonnes, or, about 25 per cent of the total, worldwide marine uranium. The Ganga and the Brahmaputra together, they estimate, dump about 1,000 tonnes of dissolved uranium annually in …
COIR IS excellent for making the nettings or grids used on denuded hill-sides to fix soil and promote growth of vegetation, which, in turn, prevents landslides and improves the ecological balance in the area. "Since coir is highly water-absorbant, ideal conditions are created for the germination of seeds", said P …
All THAT the government is earning from the Bhopal disaster is interest: Rs 20 crore daily from the Rs 715 crore deposited by the Union Carbide as compensation money. Nearly eight years after the accident not one person has been paid compensation for damages suffered in this major industrial mishap. …
RANTHAMBHOR National Park in Rajasthan is in the news, thanks to rampant poaching in the tiger reserve. This year's tiger census in the park shows their number has fallen from 46 to 18 in just one year. But even this is a rough estimate as only 13 tigers were physically …
DELHI's roads display a sign of what's to come -- traffic police wearing gas masks. Police officials decided to issue the masks to give traffic constables some respite from the extremely high pollution at 40 major intersections. The masks are supposed to be especially useful to Delhi police, because the …
THANKS to poor rainfall in the area, the fear of Manibeli being inundated by monsoon-fed waters of the Narmada has receded temporarily. According to Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) activists, work on the dam seems to have slowed down considerably and they estimate the height of the dam now at about …
SCIENTISTS at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in Lucknow and the Indian Institute of Tropical Botany in Pune have found growth rings of tropical trees such as teak (Tectona grandis) and tun (Cedrela toona) can be used to reconstruct the climate, especially the vagaries of the monsoon, in the …
EUROPEAN spacecraft Giotto created history mid-July when it swept past the comet, Grigg-Skjellerup, some 240 million km away in space. Giotto flew within 200 km of the comet's nucleus at 14 km a second and collected valuable data, despite being handicapped after its 1986 encounter with Halley's Comet. Fragments from …
BOMBAY's residents are always ready for a deluge -- it is drought that they fear. And, the grim sceptre of waterless days has risen this year. Water levels in lakes Vaitarana, Tansa, Tulsi and Vihar have dipped to within two metres above drawable level. With the monsoon playing truant, city …
THE EIGHTH international conference on AIDS "will be sadly remembered for the change in venue from Boston to Amsterdam, necessitated by the discriminatory travel restrictions still in place in the USA". This rueful comment was made at the opening session by Michael Merson, director of WHO's global programme on AIDS, …
RESEARCHERS at the conference were divided over the dramatic disclosure of a disease similar to AIDS, which does not arise from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This raised a debate on whether this was a new disease or had resulted from an HIV mutant. The virus responsible for this disease …
