Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Futala Lake’s charm fades amid neglect and poor maintenance appearing in ‘The Times of India’ dated 25.05.2025". The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Futala Lake’s charm fades amid neglect …
Residents of Karad and downstream villages on the Krishna in western Maharashtra had no reason to suspect the efficacy of their new drinking water network. But they are victims now of a jaundice epidemic resulting from contaminated potable water in both urban and rural areas. The outbreak has taken a …
When Garhchiroli district collector Subrath Rathod seized a truck illegally transporting teak in Maharashtra last September, an enquiry was held and it showed that illegal timber-felling in eastern Maharashtra, particularly his district and neighbouring Bhandara, is widespread and involves forest, revenue and railway officials. The two districts contain more than …
THE BOMBAY High Court has ruled that bamboo mats are forest produce, thereby contradicting the rulings of both the Gujarat High Court and the additional sessions judge. The pro-forest department ruling came in response to a criminal writ petition filed by the Maharashtra forest department, challenging a lower court judgement …
SUSTAINABLE development is a growing concern for many grassroots organisations, such as the Mukti Sangharsh Movement (MSM) in Sangli district in western Maharashtra. Over the last decade, MSM has involved peasants and labourers in developing scientific alternatives as part of its anti-drought movement, and more recently, in the Bali Raja …
NOVEMBER 28 was the 102nd death anniversary of Jotiba Phule. Though his centenary was not celebrated with the same national fervor as B R Ambedkar's, mass rallies were held to renew the realisation of the importance of Phule as a social radical, especially among the awakening dalit and low-caste masses. …
AT A RALLY of 300,000 people in Shegaon, Maharashtra, last November, the Shetkari Sanghatana put forward a new farm programme called chaturang sheti (four-pronged agriculture). Sanghatana leader Sharad Joshi argued the economic crises and the collapse of statist development models have resulted in the state being unable to extract surpluses …
"MAVA NATE Mava Raj" (our government in our village) is the slogan Sarvodaya workers raised at a 1988 meeting in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district, to educate people about village democracy. After the slogan-shouting, an old, "illiterate" Maria Gond adivasi, clad in a loin-cloth, stunned the Sarvodaya workers by asking, "You people …
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 …
Drip irrigation brought honours and money to Javerilal Kapurchand Kanaria of Nashik district when he ventured out of his cloth business and began growing pomegranates, each weighing more than a kg. Two years after Kanaria started his scientific farming in Taharabad, his balance-sheet -- Rs 6 lakh annually from a …
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 …
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 …
Gandhian activist M K Ghosh can rightly be called the father of the solar cooker which is being promoted in India today. When he was in prison with Rajendra Prasad during the Quit India Movement, Prasad offered him Rs 5,000 to design a working model of a solar cooker. Ghosh's …
THE morning hours in Barapal, near Udaipur, present a curious sight. Hundreds of headloaders crowd around the national highway looking for vehicles to transport charcoal or firewood to Udaipur. All of them are victims of drought. Selling wood illegally felled from government forests is their last resort for survival. Kesa …
IT is at a time like this that the famous Ralegan Siddhi village in Ahmednagar district -- the handiwork of a social worker, Anna Hazare -- stands out with a difference. It is green and it is surviving. There is indeed stress but no distress. The village has received only …
LARGE parts of India are again in the grip of drought -- from the dry regions of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Marathwada and Vidarbha to the high rainfall state of Kerala. By official meteorological accounts, this was a near normal year. The pundits in New Delhi's Mausam Bhawan have a map of …
An integrated approach to energy planning, when applied to large hydroelectric projects, requires that the energy-opportunity cost of the land submerged under the reservoir be incorporated into the planning methodology. Biomass energy lost from the submerged land has to be compared to the electrical energy generated, for which we develop …
It is popular in periods of Hindu religious fasting like Navratri. It is also commonly found on the shelves of health food stores. But for the tribals in the Sahyadri hills in Maharashtra, buckwheat is a way of life. Unlike in the hilly regions of northern India where kuttu, as …
ALL the 18 villages that will be affected by the proposed airport at Navi Mumbai boycotted the public hearing held on May 5. The government acquired the land for urban development almost 40 years ago, but until the airport project was planned for the site, villagers did not fear losing …
