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. …
WHEN PUBLIC interest litigation (PIL) was introduced in India about 10 years ago, it was hailed as a landmark in the development of the Indian legal system. Though touted then as a powerful tool, in improving social and environmental conditions through legal action, PIL has turned out to be relatively …
PIL DIFFERS significantly from other forms of litigation as regards a person's legal right to file a suit. Traditionally, only an aggrieved party had the locus standi to sue for judicial redress. In PIL, the court has broadened and liberalised the concept of locus standi to read: If the fundamental …
• Sanitation in Ratlam: In a landmark judgement in 1980, the Supreme Court explicitly recognised the impact of a deteriorating urban environment on the poor. It linked basic public health facilities to human rights and compelled the municipality to provide proper sanitation and drainage. However, according to numerous reports, little …
Article 21: No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedures established according to law. Article 47: The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among …
IN LATE 1989, Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi demonstrated his government's commitment to the preservation of the elephant by setting fire to nearly 12 tonnes of ivory worth US $3 million. Moi's dramatic act was the climax of a sustained campaign by conservationists, which caught the hearts of many across …
IN A PROGRAMME conducted by the Academy for Development of Science in Karjat in Maharashtra, farmers all over the country collected some 365 local varieties of rice in as many days. As many as 325 of these were not documented in the 60,000-long official list of the rice plant (Oryza …
BIRD-WATCHERS, studying the mating habits of different species since the early 1970s, are discovering that faithlessness is common and most birds fancy a romp outside their nest. The cuckoo's waywardness is well-known, but this is so even among birds hitherto thought to be monogamous, such as the guillemot (Uria aalgae), …
MANY varieties of crops in the higher Himalaya are rapidly disappearing, resulting in an alarming decrease in crop diversity in the Garhwal Himalaya, according to scientists at the G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development. The Garhwal Himalaya is a repository of many lesser-known and unexploited crops, but …
A VULTURE is really a stork and albatrosses belong to the same super-family as the flightless penguins. This is what US ornithologists, Charles Sibley, Jon Ahlquist and Burt Monroe have concluded in their recent rearrangement of traditional classification, based on a controversial new technique developed by them known as DNA-DNA …
A biodegradable enzyme that can replace two conventional agents now used to de-hair animal skins for leather manufacture has been produced by the Madras-based Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI). Christened Clarizyme, the enzyme is extracted from a fungus, Aspergillus sp. It has several advantages over the conventional agents, calcium oxide …
WITH INCREASING emphasis being placed on upgrading of technical training, Indian institutes providing such training are seeking help in this area from multilateral agencies. The World Bank is funding two such projects that are being implemented by the ministries of labour and human resource development (HRD). The projects aim to …
WHEN YEAST'S chromosome III became the first chromosome to have its DNA described fully, a big surprise lay in store for scientists: They stumbled upon a wealth of genes whose functions are completely unknown. "All of a sudden we learn there is a whole class of genes, more than half …
EGYPTIAN scientists Y I Hanna and M M Kandil of the National Institute for Standards in Cairo have designed and tested a double-layered curtain using local textiles which absorbs sound and light to a high degree, reports the Indian Journal of Technology (Vol. 30 No. 6). The curtain is not …
THE RIVER dolphin (Platanista gangetica), once teeming in the Ganga, Brahmaputra, Mahanadi and Karnaphuli rivers, has had its numbers reduced drastically because of river diversion for irrigation, dam construction, river traffic, increased fishing, poaching and pollution. As a result, the river dolphin is not to be found now in the …
ZIMBABWEAN authorities at the Gonarezhou National Park are going ahead with their plan to cull elephant and impala herds by as much as one-third to ensure the survival of other species, including people living in the area. Describing their plan as a "grim but essential" step, the authorities disclosed the …
A NOTED cetacean expert, Randall R Reeves, has pleaded for another dolphin sanctuary in Pakistan's Punjab province to protect the endangered blind river dolphin on the basis of a study on the likely impact of a hydroelectric station at the Tunsa barrage conducted in 1990. The power station, according to …
A NEW cryogenic system for industrial cleaning, using "dry ice" or solidified carbon dioxide, has been developed by Distillers MG, which is part of the German Messer Griesheim industrial gas group. The "cold jet" cleaning system, as it is known, uses small pellets of dry ice, which are blown in …
YET ANOTHER World Bank-funded dam project is under fire. The Visthapiti Mukti Vahini (VMV) has challenged the rehabilitation of people displaced by the Chandil dam on the Suvarnarekha river in Bihar, in the Supreme Court. The VMV holds that a decade after the initiation of the land acquisition proceedings, rehabilitation …
RESIDENTS of Domiasiat and Wahkaliar villages near Cherrapunji in Meghalaya have formed village action committees to resist a proposed uranium mine in the region. Students, welfare organisations and opposition parties in the state have joined hands to form the Khasi Jaintia Environment Protection Council (KJEPC) to support them. KJEPC convener …
RECENT studies by four independent teams of astronomers indicate that planetary systems resembling the young solar system may exist in nearby parts of the galaxy. Three of these studies, presented at a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society, focussed on a star called Beta Pictoris, which is visible from …
