The Bikaner Development Authority Bill, 2025, passed by the Rajasthan Assembly, aims to establish a Bikaner Development Authority to regulate development activities in the Bikaner district. The bill was passed by voice vote, with the opposition Congress walking out of the House due to insufficient discussion. The bill was introduced …
science and policy-oriented research has in recent decades had to address knowledge systems hitherto considered marginal to the mainstream discourse on science. Among the new themes that have emerged, studies focussing on gender relations have uncovered the fact that gender biases are deeply ingrained in the fields of science and …
Plagued by a financial crisis and mounting criticism about waste and mismanagement from the US, UN officials have launched a counter-attack by detailing concrete results achieved by the UN secretary general Boutros Boutros Ghali. Recently, the US accused Ghali of hampering efforts to cut costs and streamline the organization's bureaucracy. …
DETERMINATION of the atomic configurations of materials is of great relevance in studying their properties. From x-ray diffraction to electron microscopy, many tools have been used over the years. But now comes a new technique of x-ray holography which promises to revolutionise the study of materials. Miklos Tegze and Gyula …
THE hall was packed to its capacity, as environmental activist Medha Patkar spoke to students from Delhi University on the idea behind the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM)'. " Vikas kya hai, agar humko tai karna hai, to akendrit kijiye (If we are to delcide what development is, we …
Under a novel development strategy aimed at improving the farmers' cause, a seven-year project mainly funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, is to be launched in April jfl Sri Lanka. The scheme will involve the total participation of villagers alongwith NGOs. Currently, necessary tanks and villages are being …
KERALA is considered a puzzle in international development debates as it reportedly shows economic stagnation with high social development. Comparative longevity, declining fertility, better infant survival rate and increasing literacy are some development indicators usually projected. With the kind of publicity received within the country and abroad, there are frequent …
IT'S still the age of ideas despite the failure and death of ideologies and dearth of seminal ideas to rescue the collapsing fundamentals of social order and societies. Development and Environmental Economics: The Relevance of Gandhi, written by K Rajaratnam, an eminent economist and Gandhian activist, is an expanded monograph …
TUCKED away in the flat valley of Dalma hills in East Singhbhum Patna district, Bihar, lies the village of B I H A R Pagda. Although only 20 km. away from the steel city of shedpur, it had remained jamPat impoverished and underdeveloped until five years ago. Pagda today, however, …
THE Environmental Activists' Handbook edited by Gayatri Singh, Keban Anklesharia and Colin Gonsalves carries the pic an old fdic of a woman, named Sunderbai, on its cover. coptim below reads - "Sunderbai, twice displaced by 0 Am project, eventually died of starvation on 21.1.93". nor picture provoked many questions in …
A SIMPLE distinction between developed and developing countries is that the former category has solutions for which there seem to be no problems while the latter is beset with problems for which there seem to be no solutions. The contributors to this book believe that this divide can be overcome …
IN A severe indictment of the government's economic policies, the Planning Commission has observed that capital expenditure on infrastructure and social sector have suffered most in the quest for fiscal deficit control. Public investment in agriculture has become stag- nant or has decreased over the first 3 years (1992-95) of …
DESPITE all efforts to marginalise the chasm between the genders, the Human Development Report (hdr), 1995, has documented gender disparities still existing in the world. Prepared against the backdrop of the Fourth World Conference on Women which began in Beijing in early September, the report specifies that human development needs …
A RECENT international workshop in New Delhi ended with a call for culture-based developmental models, "to set right the negative impact of the Western models." The deliberations provided much food for thought, as its conclusions were based on the pivotal argument that the enormous global problems facing humankind today cannot …
What is wrong with progress and development? Can they be the culprits in a process that has wrought gradual marginalisation of the tribal people? Suresh Sharma asserts that the modern world with science and technology as its strong supporters has dealt most cruelly with a race that took nature as …
AN alternative structural adjustment programme (asap), formulated by the Guyana-based Bretton Woods Reform Organisation (bwro), has managed to garner German support for itself. Backed by Germany's ministry of economic cooperation and development, asap is working on over 100 major policy recommendations for the development of people's priorities in every sector …
Can culture be ignored by those who are involved in the process of development. "No," says Ismail Serageldin, vice-president for Environmentally Sustainable Development in the World Bank. According to him, true development cannot take place without taking into account the cultural aspects of the society in question. It is this …
TO DAHELI and her husband Lalia, a conference of the order of the World Social Summit for Development has little significance. Daheli is a plump, middle-aged tribal peasant woman, belonging to the Mankar subtribe of the Bhils, residing in a village called Attha in the Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. …
Going by the statistics provided by this year's International Labour Organisation report on world employment, "modernise or perish" has become the mantra of progress for developing nations. This is shown in the high growth rates in East and Southeast Asia, and in economic stagnation in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. …
Since 1985, countries -- particularly in Latin America -- have negotiated several arrangements to reduce their crippling debt burden. They promptly ended up losing the right to decide what to do with the money saved. In lieu of debt reduction, they have, in what are called "debt for nature" swaps, …
Dubious land sales that hold grave implications for fragile ecologies have set a dangerous precedence in the strategically sensitive Andamans and Nicobar Islands. What is more ominous is that the powers that be, including the apex Island Development Authority (IDA), plead ignorance of such land transactions. S Z Qasim, member …
