Order of the National Green Tribunal (Central Zone Bench, Bhopal) in the matter of Kamal Tiwari Vs Union of India & Others dated 27/05/2025. The Principal Chief Conservator of Forest and Chief Wildlife Warden, Rajasthan stated that a high level meeting to review the progress on the demarcation of Nahargarh …
African locusts, which have been infesting parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan since mid-July, are keeping pest control experts on their toes. The agriculture ministry has pressed into action two helicopters and a Vayudoot aircraft, armed with sprayers and insecticides, to fight the locusts that rode a cyclonic storm from Oman …
KHEJRI (Prosopis cineraria) is nature's best gift to the farmers of Rajasthan and Haryana for it not only thrives in drought conditions and in poor soils, but also encourages the growth of crops planted near it if its lateral roots are pruned (Changing Villages, Vol 12, No 1). Scientists at …
OUT OF sight, out of mind. Perhaps that is why the depletion and degradation of groundwater throughout India has gone virtually unnoticed while much concern has been expressed over the condition of surface water resources. The crisis created by falling groundwater levels has grabbed the attention of only the immediate …
"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 …
Just as environmentalists and the authorities thought they had finally Written the epitaph for miners in the Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR), its spectre Has come back to haunt them. According to Ashok Kamar, advisor to the Ministry of environment and forests (MEF), as many as 45 mines, ordered closed by …
So elated were Rajasthan's protectors of the wild with the just-concluded 1993 tiger census at the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve (RTR), they went to town with the results -- and painted themselves into a corner. The census shows RTR has 28 tigers, down by 17 from a 1991 high of 45. …
IT TOOK a series of dogged protests by farmers to get small-scale textile dyeing and printing units near Pali in Rajasthan to get together to set up effluent treatment plants jointly so that pollutants need never again paint the Luni river red and blue. The town and its more than …
ECOLOGISTS and large-scale industrialists fear India's liberalisation policies will lead to a runaway growth in the dyestuffs sector, which will cause unimaginable damage to the environment. They say the Indian small-scale dyestuffs industry is a prime example of a dirty industry. K R V Subrahmanian, managing director of Colour Chem, …
SEVEN entrepreneurs from chemical units at the Jeedimetla Industrial Estate (JIE) near Hyderabad have shown how effluent discharge can be collectively reduced. In 1987, they conceived the idea of a cooperative effluent treatment plant, and two years later, a one million-litres-a-day effluent treatment plant, was set up by Jeedimetla Effluent …
FOLLOWING an extended drought and widespread deforestation, Jambhoji, the son of a village headman in Rajasthan, had a vision that the hard times were a result of the conflict with nature. In 1485, Jambhoji, who was now known as Swami Jambeshwar Maharaj and the founder of the Bishnoi sect, laid …
A PROTECTED forest with unclear boundaries, a tiger reserve chalked out in a limestone-rich area, mining leases whose legality is questionable -- all these have created a mess in the Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR) in Rajasthan, resulting in the Supreme Court having to intervene once again. On April 8, the …
ON OCTOBER 11, 1991, the Supreme Court appointed a five-member committee, headed by retired Rajasthan high court judge M L Jain, to determine the boundaries of the areas in Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR) notified under various acts as protected forests and Tiger Project Reserve. The committee also was required to …
SARISKA was first declared a reserved area in 1955 through a notification issued under the Rajasthan Wild Animals and Birds Protection Act, 1951. Later, parts of it were declared a sanctuary and a national park under Section 35 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. Different blocks of the reserved area …
FOR THE first time in India's environmental history, a person was imprisoned for contempt of court in relation to the Sariska mining case. The Supreme Court-appointed committee had invited petitioner Rajinder Singh, head of the Tarun Bharat Sangh, to accompany them on a tour of the mining areas. The mine-owners …
AT 3JAMAKUthe daughter of Laxman Meena of Khodi Mahogodi village in Udaipur districtwas the youngest dracontiasis -- a disease caused by guinea worms (Dracunculus medinensis) -- patient in Rajasthan. She was cured last year by a surgical technique developed by an ayurvedic team led by Bhanwar Lal Sharma and sponsored …
TRIBALS from 23 villages in Udaipur district, citing the potential displacement of 12,000 people, are gearing up for protracted battle with the government to scrap the proposed Manasi Wakal dam, intended to supply drinking water to Udaipur. The villagers allege the project, in fact, was conceived to meet the massive …
THE PESTICIDES India Limited (PIL) factory in the Khempura area of Udaipur is the focus of a pollution controversy that some believe is now assuming political overtones. After local residents complained of the factory's indiscriminate disposal of toxic wastes and discharge of malodorous pollutants, the district collector asked the Rajasthan …
