Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Are missing palm trees causing more lighting deaths in Bihar appearing in ‘The Times of India’ dated 29.05.2025". The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Are missing palm trees causing …
In the the first survey of its kind in the country, the Hyderabad-based National Remote Sensing Agency (nrsa) has prepared detailed maps of the underground fires that have raged in the Jharia coalfields for most of this century. A scanned survey of 6,000 ha at the heart of the area, …
This indicative plan has based on the work of field/park directors and their colleagues in the eight protected areas, and of various non-governmental organisations involved in carrying out PRA in the proposed project area. The final output has benefit greatly from the inputs of the various national consultants and consulting …
The cash-strapped Bihar government has plugged funds meant for the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY) for flood control measures. The state's rural development department has asked the district magistrates of 6 flood-prone districts to utilise funds meant for employment schemes to repair embankments. However, even though the Bihar government had planned …
KISKI Suraksha is a film made by Shree Prakash, who spent several months watching and documenting a movement in progress. Netarhat is a small but pretty hill station in the Palamau district of Bihar. In and around Netarhat, there are several tribes that have long been declared close to extinction …
INDIAN filmmakers have tackled the subject of Adivasis before, but the film under review this fortnight is the most ambitious in recent years. Tapan K Bose's Jharkhand was meant to be part of a trilogy, but the other two didn't get made because the filmmaker ran out of resources. Bose …
Those who took upon themselves the task of opposing the Dunkel proposals for the Uruguay round of talks have done a remarkable job. A motley band of people with little in common -- except their professed dislike for the Dunkel proposals -- have managed to carry the anti-Dunkel stand even …
KABAR Tal, a 7,500-ha lake in Begusarai district of north Bihar, is ecologically one of the most important wetlands in the state. The lake hosts 106 species of resident birds and is a nesting ground for 59 species of migratory birds. In addition, the wetland supports a large number of …
RAJPURA, a village adjacent to the Shiv Shankar Chemical Industries Pvt Ltd, a liquor factory in Banka district's Jagadishpur block, is almost ruined. Effluents from the factory have rendered Rajpura's agricultural land, the two drinking water wells and the shallow handpumps useless and a perpetual stench pervades the village. This …
IT IS THE economics of a dam and not the plight of the people it displaces that makes a good news report for national and international media and earns a quick invitation from the government for a dialogue. Citing the Sardar Sarovar as an example, a senior Union government official …
If the mid-August assault on some officials of the Bihar water resources department, on an inspection tour of the eastern Kosi embankment in Saharsa, is anything to go by, flood control officials in the state face an unenviable future. The attack was triggered by the villagers' perception that embankments were …
SEVERAL foods people all over the country consume daily -- milk, butter and cereals, for example -- have been found to contain substances hazardous to health by a nationwide survey conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The ICMR surveyors found that as much as 87 per cent …
BESET by famine and drought, large sections of Orissa and Bihar are beginning to mirror the stark images of hunger in Somalia and Sudan. In Orissa, more than 10 million people -- the majority of whom are tribals -- are reeling under a famine. In tribal-dominated south Bihar, too, more …
PEOPLE in Orissa's famine-hit regions are desperately selling their children -- not for the money but to ensure two square meals a day for them. So far, 16 cases of children being sold have been exposed in the local media, but the state government is yet to admit even one. …
Even as the state government continues to accuse Tata Iron & Steel Company (TISCO) of unchecked deforestation around Jamshedpur, it has also locked horns with TISCO over riparian rights in the nearby Suvarnarekha river. Bihar's firebrand minister of irrigation, Jagdanand Singh, is demanding Rs 15 crore as the state's "rightful …
CASTING its anti-pollution net wider, the Supreme Court has cracked down on industries in Bihar and West Bengal spewing pollutants into the Ganga river, ordering them to be shut down or relocated. Ruling on a public interest petition filed by lawyer M C Mehta, Justices Kuldip Singh and N M …
GORGED by monsoon rains, the Ganga flows unpredictably in the winter creating pockets of land on the Bihar-Uttar Pradesh border, which frequently trigger violent conflict between cultivators on either side of the river. This year, tension was marked in March, especially in the adjoining districts of Ballia in UP and …
DOES TISCO, also known as Tata Steel, hope to succeed where Germany's Third Reich failed -- to last 1,000 years? So it would seem, going by the statement of Bihar environment and forest minister Sonadhari Singh that the steel giant has taken over West Bokaro Coal Mines on a 999-year …
The end of 1992 saw advocates of development-at-any-cost increasingly impatient with the Union ministry for environment and forests (MEF), whom they accused of blocking development projects worth several thousand crores of rupees. The major pending projects include the open-cast mining schemes in Bihar, KRIBHCO's fertiliser plant at Hazira in Gujarat, …
Laundered money will be used to clean slums in 454 towns. Black money to the tune of Rs 63 crore, which was deposited last year with the National Housing Bank (NHB) for immunity under the Voluntary Deposits Scheme, will be used to establish a revolving corpus to refinance loans given …
NO OTHER region of India has paid a heavier price for India's industrialisation than the Damodar valley, which traverses the poor states of Bihar and West Bengal. Rich in coal resources, the region has been extensively mined for this valuable mineral, which energises domestic hearths and industrial furnaces throughout the …
