Affidavit filed by the Chief Wildlife Warden, Assam in the matter of news item titled "the last feral horses in India" appearing in Mongabay, November 5, 2024. The matter relates to the critically endangered status of feral horses in the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park as well as of smuggling of these …
function opengr3(){ var popurl="html/20030715_gr3.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=500,height=500,scrollbars=yes") } Land of the Fat In the last week of June, the big fight regarding obesity in the US took on real flesh as more than 100 lawyers, consumer advocates and activists landed up at Shillman Hall in Northeastern University, Boston, US, to attend a …
function opengr4(){ var popurl="html/20030715_gr4.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=425,height=500,scrollbars=yes") } Example: India & China Developing countries today are passing through what nutrition experts call a ‘dietary transition’. The dietary transition consists of a number of interlinked shifts: • A change in the methods of food production, processing, storage and distribution. As a capitalist economy …
after the heat wave the deluge. Flash floods, triggered by torrential rains over the past two weeks, have rendered at least four lakh people homeless in Assam. This at a time when several states in the country have not yet recovered from a severe dry spell. The monsoon which arrived …
rice has been a staple food of West Bengal from antiquity and thus was grown in abundance all across the region. At one time, 60 varieties of rice were cultivated in Bengal. Pantabhat, which is basically cooked rice soaked overnight in water, was probably a way of preserving rice as
FIRST there was the mounting suspense. All of India awaited with bated breath the arrival of the south west monsoon. Would it arrive? Miraculously, politicians went into intricate calculations: would the bounty be enough to sustain the GDP growth projected in the Tenth Five Year Plan? Then came the rains. …
Majuli, a river island within the two arms of the mighty Brahmaputra river, is a site having extreme historical and cultural importance, and warrants immediate exposure to the scientific community. The island faces an acute erosion problem as no permanent anti-erosion measures based on proper geohydrological models have been adopted …
function openana1(){ var popurl="html/20030331_p28.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=610,height=460") } War zones Where battles rage in the evening By the time they killed it on June 25, 2002 the female elephant had killed 13 people over three days across the Indo-Nepal border. This much is known. The rest is a mix of half-truths, rumours, …
Northeast India occupies 8 per cent of the country's geographic area, and supports 3.8 per cent of India's total population (2001 census figures). The average population density of the Northeast is 149 persons per square kilometre (sq km), a figure far below India's population density (324 persons per sq km). …
The provisional figures for India’s forest cover are now ready, and Down To Earth has managed to acquire a copy. (see table: Change in forest cover) The figures, when compared to earlier ones, show an overall increase of 236, 800 ha of forest. Is that really so? Every two years, …
The polio virus (pv) is possibly the most innocuous virus that affects humans. The improvement of sanitation standards across the world has meant fewer people are afflicted by polio as infants, upsetting the historical balance between virus and host. But, since poorer sections still live in squalor and consume water …
A novel referendum by the Siliguri Municipal Corporation (smc) spelt doom for 122 trees. The civic body asked people to choose between the trees and traffic jams. In the voting, the roads won by a mile. The corporation prepared a list of the trees and obtained a no-objection certificate from …
it was a festival with a difference - the spotlight was on elephants. The venue was Kaziranga National Park (knp), Assam. Besides being a huge hit with tourists, the three-day festival from January 11 to 13, 2003, also augured well for the turmoil-ridden human-elephant relationship in the state. The Assam …
Writ Petition number 202 of 1995; Godavarman v the Union of India and others. This is the ‘forest case’ being heard in Supreme Court for the past seven years. With more than 800 interlocutory applications (ias) filed, the case will dictate the fate of India’s forests and an estimated 10 …
In a significant decision, the Supreme Court (SC) directed the Assam forest department to pay Rs 1,000 per month against every hectare of encroached forestland in the state. "This amounts to Rs 28 crore per month as fine to the SC,' said state forest minister Pradyut Bordoloi. He pointed out …
PILE OF PERIL: Toxic waste from piles of unused pesticides in Africa is threatening people's health and the environment. Despite several clean-up measures by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), less than five per cent of the stockpiles have been disposed till now. IN PROTEST: From October 5 to …
• India generates about five million tonnes of hazarduous waste. But systems to manage it are non-existent Boards fail to even list the guilty, leave alone penalise Hazarduous waste generating (HWG) units in some states State Estimated HWG units Licensed HWG units (in per cent) Sites for waste disposal Sites …
the extensive drive of the Union ministry of environment and forests (mef) to evict encroachers from more than one million hectares of forestland across the country by September 30, 2002, is facing stiff resistance in a number of states. The recent mef notification (see box: Highlights) could affect approximately 350 …
japanese encephalitis has claimed more than 100 lives in Assam recently. But more than the disease, official apathy and poor preventive measures are responsible for the deaths. Because, though the disease is an annual occurrence, the state authorities have been unable to devise adequate measures to combat the disease. Unofficial …
The almost exclusive focus on the multiple violent insurgencies in Assam has ensured that no other issue catches the policymakers' eye. Fluorosis is not even a perceived threat in Assamese society, even as it slowly assumes uncontrollable proportions. Today, over 100,000 people in Assam suffer from hydrofluorosis
