Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of News Item titled "2 killed in blast at illegal cracker unit in Thanjavur appearing in The Hindu dated 19.05.2025". The application is registered suo-motu on the basis of the news item titled 2 killed in blast at illegal cracker unit …
the Tamil Nadu government's effort at coastal regulation in tsunami-affected districts has taken a controversial turn. The government had ordered the relocation of houses within 500 metres of the High Tide Line (htl) and also of those between 500 metres and 1 kilometre (km) if the topography so demanded. But …
the new Veeranam Extension Project, envisaged to supply drinking water to the Chennai Metropolitan area from six proposed collector wells in the Kollidam (Colleron) riverbed, has evoked strong protests from farmers of villages situated on the river's banks. They fear the project will increase their water woes. The Rs 300 …
District hospital, Nagapattinam is just two kilometres (km) from the Bay of Bengal. On December 26, 2004, when the tsunami struck, the hospital's paediatric ward was swept away; there were no survivors. This hospital was our first call as volunteers in relief operations coordinated by the Chennai-based non-governmental organisation, Suyam: …
At 6.29 am, on the morning of December 26, 2004 an undersea earthquake erupts in Sumatra, triggering off tidal waves called tsunami. A minute later, the India Meteorological Department (imd) gets the news. In 15 minutes, imd tracks the tsunami to the Indonesian coastline. But they make no attempt to …
The monitoring and management of the Indian coastline has come under sharp focus after the tsunami disaster. There is now a strong demand to implement the Coastal Regulatory Zone (crz) notification of 1991. Let us look at why protecting coastal ecology is so critical. Natural protectors, such as sand dunes …
The Indian ocean covers 73,556,000 sq km, or 20 per cent of the world’s surface. Aspects like oceanography, geophysical phenomena, undersea exploration and economic and military uses have a bearing on ocean behaviour. How cognisant are our experts with this large water body? Other than isolated research programmes associated with …
It would be naive to assume that disasters will stop. We cannot change the nature of disasters. What we can change, certainly control, is the scale that a disaster wreaks. This is precisely what disaster preparedness
Scientists believe that the Sumatra earthquake made the earth wobble on its axis and permanently accelerated the Earth's rotation, shortening a day by a fraction of second and permanently altering the regional map. The devastating undersea earthquake off Sumatra in Indonesia has brought about some striking changes in the Indian …
Disasters are not predictable. They follow no standard operating procedures. Disaster preparedness is about managing the unknown, not a science but a social behaviour that’s responsive, predictive and imaginative.• Effective disaster management depends on four factors: • Preparedness: knowing where and when disaster will hit • Mitigation: through measures like …
India has entered Phase II of tackling the tsunami disaster. It is now readying to rebuild and rehabilitate the affected areas and develop disaster prevention and management systems. In the first week of January, the government appointed the Planning Commission as the nodal agency to coordinate, monitor and manage the …
Even as relief work continues in areas devastated by the tsunami, the corpus of the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund has quietly swelled to around Rs 500 crore. The money is said to be the largest corpus ever collected through the fund. This is just money that has been sent …
The outward expansion of larger metros, gradual changes in land use and occupations have transformed the rural hinterland into semi-urban or ‘peri-urban’ areas. Inhabitants of these ‘peri-urban’ regions are increasingly threatened by a deteriorating quality of life prompted by deforestation, water depletion and pollution as well as by the poor …
Self-Help Group and linkage banking programme has come a long way from a small pilot project of NABARD to become a major poverty financing programme in India. Several organisations have participated in the country-wide programme with several models, but the essence remained the banking linkage through groups of poor women. …
state governments across the country have missed the October 1, 2004, deadline to implement the new in-use emission norms for vehicles, better known as the pollution under control (puc) certificate programme. The Delhi government has extended the deadline by one month and the West Bengal government by one-and-a-half months. The …
