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. …
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 …
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 …
THE REPORT of the Independent Review (RIR) of the Sardar Sarovar was expected to look at Sardar Sarovar and other projects on the Narmada not only from the viewpoint of displacement and rehabilitation, but more holistically to see whether submergence itself could be reduced to manageable proportions. Instead, the committee …
AT THE outset, I would like to mention that I have not been able to read the Morse report. My opinions are based on the summaries of the report that have been published in the newspapers. I find the report disappointing in the sense of not "being well done". Going …
I HAVE not seen the Morse report. So I cannot comment on its specifics. But I have some general observations to make on the Narmada project and other issues of this kind. I believe that rehabilitation and resettlement must precede the launching of a project and not follow it. Secondly, …
THE RIR had raised considerable expectations in western India. The report, however, came as a damp squib. The only substantive comment made by the report relates to basic hydrology, which states, "We found that there is good reason to believe that the project will not perform as planned." The reference …
THIS YEAR, US President George Bush announced that US $1.4 billion is to be made available in 1993 to the US Global Change Research Programme (USGCRP), which will lead to a massive increase in humankind's understanding of the earth's atomosphere. As a part of the programme, a network of remote …
• Pesticides manufacturer Monsanto is testing genetically-engineered cotton resistant to the deadly bellworm. The cotton contains genes from a natural ly-occurri ng bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis which kills the bollworm. • Hundreds of wind turbines produced by the Japanese corporation, Mitsubishi, are now being used on one of the largest …
THE SOUTH had a two-point agenda in Rio: funds and technology. It failed to get both. The North continued to insist that technology is a private resource which states cannot give away, whereas the South continued to ask for technology on preferential and concessional terms. If there was any movement …
THE CONFERENCE has just ratified the Earth Charter, the name of which has been changed to the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development at the behest of developing countries. This puts environment before industrialisation, lays down the responsibilities of developed and developing nations and stresses that development has to be …
THE RECENT environmental carnival at Rio was an extremely enlightening and educative experience for me being, perhaps, the largest gathering of NGOs, on the one hand, and that of heads of governments, on the other. There were essentially two parallel events which took place in the first half of June …
THE SUB-CONTINENT, judging by these three reports, went prepared to Rio. In fact, the first report, prepared by a Sri Lankan NGO, chides UNCED for trying to save the earth without even consulting its people. The three reports focus on the major environmental problems of these countries. They draw attention …
