Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Ramdevbhai Samatbhai Sanjva Vs State of Gujarat & Others dated 09/05/2025. The matter related to remedial actions to be taken for abatement of pollution of river Bhadar near Ahmedabad. Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) has filed the response affidavit, March …
"JODHPUR has a future only if the Indira Gandhi canal is brought till here," says J Venkateshwarlu, director of the Central Arid Zone Research Institute. Come it certainly will, but no one will vouch for the ability of the Jodhpur branch of the canal to deliver sufficient water to the …
THE PLIGHT of the people of Bichhri, whose groundwater was rendered unfit for consumption by the effluent discharge from Silver Chemicals Ltd, may have been forgotten in Udaipur, with the case moving at snail's pace through the courts. But the industrial threat to the area's groundwater has not receded. Now, …
Before the Green Revolution of the early 1970s, the farmers of Junagadh district on the Saurashtra coast set records in agricultural production. They boast of having done as well as their north Indian counterparts in producing oilseeds, groundnuts, sugarcane, bananas and even wheat. But today, many of them -- particularly …
IN THE wake of a severe drought in Jodhpur in 1970, the public health engineering department (PHED) decided to obtain water from the countryside around the city as an emergency measure. Rampura-Mathania was chosen because of its high water table. The PHED installed 26 tubewells in Rampura-Mathania with a total …
The Union government has made yet another feeble attempt at a dialogue with opponents of the Rs 13,000-crore Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP). Union water resources minister V C Shukla was forced to heed the demands of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) for a comprehensive review of the project after its …
I heard in Baroda on June 2 that the authorities were planning to demolish Keshubhai's hut. That night, some of us sneaked past the police cordon around Manibeli and entered the hut. Around 11 am on June 3, some 100 police surrounded the hut to demolish it. But when we …
The Narmada Bachao Andolan, which wants a revaluation of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), says the review team should consist of pro-dam and anti-dam groups. The Prime Minister or the minister for water resources should lead the pro-dam group, which should include officials from the states concerned with the project …
January 30, 1989: Official Secrets Act imposed on 10 villages around the dam site; 18 protesting activists and 500 villagers arrested. February 22: Medha Patkar and 8,000 others arrested near dam site. May 18, 1990: Armed police beat up people in 17 Madhya Pradesh villages that would be the first …
WHEN RUDA Gugha of Udauna village in the Chotila taluka of Surendranagar district "spotted a tanker parked on the dry (Mahanadi) river bed in the dead of the night" in March, little did he realise the havoc that the tanker was to wring in the region. The next day, cattle …
TUCKED away on the southern outskirts of Bhavnagar town is a dreary stretch of wilderness that once was a beautiful forest with leguminous trees and bushes spread over the rocky terrain. Creepers wove a delicate tapestry of bright flowers on the spiky branches of acacias and jujubes. Nilgai, jackal and …
Six months ago, the Union department of electronics (DoE) announced an ambitious plan to create electronics hardware technology parks (EHTPs) in order to help the country's stagnating electronic components industry by giving it access to international technology and to collaboration with multinationals. However, EHTPs have, failed to take off owing …
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, …
IT IS perhaps unfair for an economist to review a book which was originally submitted as a PhD thesis in anthropology. Unlike other anthropological works, a doctoral dissertation is necessarily less than a good read. And, as an academic work, the reviewer inevitably shows a bias, wondering much of the …
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 …
NOTHING seems to move them, the planners of misery and destruction in the Narmada Valley. Not entreaties, not scientific arguments, not reason, not 23-day hunger fasts, not 40,000-strong demonstrations, not even the possibility of entire communities drowning in their refusal to move out of their ancestral lands when the reservoir …
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. …
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 …
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 …
THE SOLAR cooker programme may soon grind to a halt as a result of mandatory ISI standards to be introduced this year. The Department of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (DNES) has already notified that subsidies would be given only to cookers complying with ISI standards. When the DNES and the Bureau …
