Order of the National Green Tribunal (Eastern Zone Bench, Kolkata) in the matter of Salboni Apartment Owner’s Association Vs State of West Bengal & Others dated 15/05/2025. The matter related to restoration of the Salboni Jheel, Kolkata, West Bengal. The NGT directed the West Bengal Pollution Control Board to place …
Wildlife conservationists realised recently that mapping the movements of dolphins could be a threat to national security! A project to survey dolphins in the Sunderbans region of West Bengal was reportedly cancelled by the state forest department (fd) after the Union ministry of defence denied the researchers permission to use …
The upsurge in the incidence of polio in Uttar Pradesh (up) is threatening to derail the World Health Organisation's (who) goal of eradicating the disease from the planet by 2005, asserts who Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland. At least 15 per cent of up's children are believed to be "under-immunised' …
Shibu Karmakar was trespassing. He knew the word. But at 11, he was too young to comprehend what it meant and easily breached the fence to the forest. The forest wasn't
I met Jacques Chirac this fortnight. Just before he made the call to George Bush and just before he left to attend the European Union summit in Athens, the French president met some 20 of us in his presidential palace for discussions on what would be the future of this …
function openmap(){ var popurl="html/20030415_map.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=650,height=500,scrollbars=yes") } Welcome to Wah india, a hazy land born of perfidy and malicious grace. Spread over territory co-extensive with 19 states in India, it is both traceable and unknown. Its physical geography, for instance, is quite virtual: Wah india keeps getting discovered; its expanding contours …
The 1970s and 1980s were a time of massive state investment in rural water development. Not only had more land to be brought under irrigation, but also drinking water supplied. These decades saw an exponential rise in the number of privately-owned pumpsets and wells, even as investment in public wells …
The official attitude towards fluoride-laced groundwater is best seen in the manner the state has gone about solutions. In a 1999 nationwide study New Delhi-based Fluorosis Research and Rural Development Foundation (frrdf) found that "only a few laboratories in the country have specified the methodology for fluoride analysis.' Experts claim …
Human negotiation with its own capacities and actions often tends to be triumphalist. A man admires his muscled torso; an elite believes itself to be the omphalos
It is a story about underground water: when the nectar turns into poison. When a daily task of drinking water from the handpump becomes the source of crippling disease and death. This is not a "natural' disaster
function openana1(){ var popurl="html/20030331_p28.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=610,height=460") } War zones Where battles rage in the evening By the time they killed it on June 25, 2002 the female elephant had killed 13 people over three days across the Indo-Nepal border. This much is known. The rest is a mix of half-truths, rumours, …
for more than five decades, fisherfolk from the estuary of Hooghly river in West Bengal have used the uninhabited island of Jambudwip as a seasonal fishing camp. Today, a complex legal wrangle threatens to jeopardise their livelihood. The Central Empowered Committee (cec), constituted by the Supreme Court (sc) has observed …
for fisherfolk and traders in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal, catching fish is child's play, thanks to harmful pesticides such as endosulfan. The fisherfolk contaminate the upper reaches of rivers such as the Teesta and the Jaldhaka with the organochlorine pesticide. This activity is carried out mainly around the Mainaguri …
Take some sand in a glass container; fill it with water. Shake the container. The water and sand become a single fluid mass. Now imagine a highly populated town standing on this material. You can't even imagine what will happen when an earthquake strikes . Once you know this, how …
on december 25, 2002, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee unveiled an ambitious scheme to provide drinking water to all villages in the country by April 2004. The project, called
do they train Indian foresters to mess up wildlife situations? It is difficult to ascribe the series of botch-ups involving leopards in the last month or so to misfortune. The most recent one was the highly publicised spectacle of a leopard killed by police and wildlife officials after it entered …
Amongst the 21 countries which are affected by a high amount of arsenic in drinking water, Bangladesh and India (mainly West Bengal) are the worst affected. In Bangladesh, the arsenic level is more than 50 microgrammes per litre in 50 out of its 64 districts with a population of 104.9 …
Millions of dollars invested to test water in those parts of Bangladesh susceptible to arsenic contamination may actually have gone down the drain. More importantly, the plight of the people has worsened. These startling facts were brought to light by a recent research. With the study raising doubts about the …
