Affidavit filed by the Chief Wildlife Warden, Assam in the matter of news item titled "the last feral horses in India" appearing in Mongabay, November 5, 2024. The matter relates to the critically endangered status of feral horses in the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park as well as of smuggling of these …
Majuli, a river island within the two arms of the mighty Brahmaputra river, is a site having extreme historical and cultural importance, and warrants immediate exposure to the scientific community. The island faces an acute erosion problem as no permanent anti-erosion measures based on proper geohydrological models have been adopted …
It is ironic that while India ranks third in fertiliser use worldwide, it ranks 14 and 16 respectively in the production of rice and wheat. It is even more ironic that India’s fertiliser policy ensures precisely such a result. Fertiliser use in India is dictated by the larger perceived need …
Agricultural growth in India has always laboured under the burden of producing more. The idea was: grow only foodgrains. That meant: not ecologically adapted cereals such as millets, but rice and wheat. The green revolution programme was single-minded: it came up with hyv (high-yielding variety) seeds for rice and wheat …
A third factor has led to the current debility of soils in India: irrigation. That is to say, water over-use. To feed the rice-wheat mentality, net irrigated area rose from 20.8 million ha in 1950 to 53.5 million ha in 1995-1996. Fed on irrigation, the agricultural area grew from a …
Soils are a very slow renewable resource. To reclaim them requires, above all, a long-term plan. With falling productivity, the realisation has sunk in that soils cannot be blindly mined, and that humans cannot just plough through the ecology they interact with. apply gypsum: Seven lakh ha of land in …
What is soil? Nothing but simple clod, always taken for granted. But dig deeper, and you will find that this simple clod generates complex equations of survival and wealth, equity and polity. It is a big little ecological variable. Its influences remain hidden from us. function openpoptable(){ var popurl="http://dte-new/dte-new/html/20030131_cover2.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=475,height=500, …
Droughts, an integral part of India's geophysical profile, have registered a steep rise in frequency and ferocity during the past 50 years. To its credit, the scientific community has kept pace by conducting research that can minimise the impact of dry spells. But the government has done precious little to …
During the last hundred years or so, deforestation and wind-water borne soil erosion have been steadily increasing and have now become the major environmental problems the world over. The man-made Sukhna Lake brought into existence through blocking of the water flow in the Sukhna Choe originating from these hills by …
Sri Lanka's Kandy lake is losing its glory. The algae mixed with garbage in the beautiful lake is stinking and the odour has spread to the nearby tourist hotels, too. Consequently, the tourists are skipping the site. The lake is not just filled with trash but also with other deposits …
death is a seasonal visitor to Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh's largest district and wasteland. It comes just before sowing and after the harvest of groundnut, a cash crop that occupies 91 per cent of land in the district. More than 100 groundnut farmers have committed suicide since the last two years …
when Bhuna Bhil of Pathara village in Dungarpur ran away from the communal carnage in Gujarat, he faced a dilemma: what would he do back in his village? It had already exhausted all his sources of livelihood. Known as the 20th century desert, Dungarpur's 68 per cent population has been …
Poverty in Sarguja district has taken epic proportions. Unlike in the Mahabharat, the descendants of Pandavas and Kauravas have come together to fight a common enemy in Sarguja: poverty. And their fight is as heroic as the Mahabharat. Pandos, the local tribals and descendants of the Pandavas, are fighting for …
Irrigation is a luxury that only a few can afford in Mandla, a water-rich district in Madhya Pradesh. The district receives an annual rainfall of 1,300 mm, which can easily sustain three crops a year. But Mandla residents can barely manage one. The district is surrounded by the mighty Narmada …
While the Union government is bothered about the high cost of storing surplus foodgrain, groundnut farmers in Anantapur commit suicide. Clearly, measures of poverty need changing. Policymakers must now take into account the time spent by women to collect firewood or water. This distance needs to be shortened as this …
Rabindra Nath Mishra, an additional block development officer, is a bit worried. He thought calculating Phulbani's poor, as directed by the Supreme Court, would be easy. The expenditure limit of Rs 250 per month (as the decisive line between poverty and prosperity) seemed a ridiculous amount. But when the final …
THE state of India's natural resources is appalling, according to a preliminary report prepared by Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) as part of its long-term 'Green India 2047' project. Nearly half the country's population does not have access to drinking water. Rs 2,000 crore worth @f nutrients are lost each …
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has urged farmers to take steps for preventing soil erosion by stopping conventional ploughing and using more sustainable practices instead. "Intensive land cultivation methods using tractors and ploughs are a major cause of severe soil loss and land degradation in many developing countries,' …
What are your development plans for Mizoram, which has one of the richest natural resources in India? Mizoram has plenty of cultivable land and the government is thinking of developing the region with more and more cash crops. It also plans for a project that would improve bamboo cultivation, which …
