Reply affidavit on behalf of the Central Ground Water Board in the matter of Suo Moto case titled "Haryana 60.48% groundwater over exploited Kurukshetra worst Jhajjar best says" appearing in the Tribune, January 8, 2025. The CGWA report, May 3, 2025 addresses the issue of groundwater exploitation and violation of …
The Kerala government decided constructing the Ambalur-Keecheri dam in Ernakulam district would remedy the decline in paddy production. Instead, the dam has accelerated damage to the crop. The dam was intended to prevent inflow of saline water from Vembanad lake, which was supposedly lowering crop yields. But agricultural experts now …
SMALL is beautiful, but not always sufficient - and this is the shortcoming that a new Filipino farming technique seeks to tackle, This method, called conservation. farming, uses the natural forest as its model but makes traditional practices more scientific and systematic and does away with costly and possibly damaging …
Harmless pesticides can be prepared for home gardens from -recipes compiled by the International Institute ofRural Reconstruction in the Philippines: Tobacco: Place tobacco leaves, stems and dust in a container. Add boiling water and cover. After 3-4 hours, dilute with four parts of water and spray on plants. It kills …
THE SPITI area of Himachal Pradesh is a cold desert, but surprisingly, agriculture is its mainstay. Transforming Spiti's lunar-like terrain into an agrarian success story was made possible by an ingenious system devised centuries ago to tap distant glaciers for water. But short-sighted developmental policies, though well-intentioned, now threaten both …
SEVERAL writers have made a name for themselves by publishing dire warnings to developing countries of the dangers posed by new technology from the West. Many wind up exaggerating and making predictions that are as uncertain as those of the neighbourhood astrologer. However, Henk Hobbelink's book is a rarity as …
The provisions in agriculture are equally growth-oriented, says JNU vice chancellor Y K Alagh, who is an agricultural economist. "The most dangerous thing in the rural sector was the drying up of credit flow. This budget has reversed that," he says. Alagh is most critical of the budgetary provisions for …
INDIA is in "imminent danger of losing a large part of its productive lands through soil salinisation", says N T Singh of the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute in Karnal. Soil salinity is natural to the subcontinent, points out Singh. Even in ancient India, in the period between 2500 BC …
A dry winter followed by the highest temperatures recorded in February in the north Indian plains in the past six decades led to fears in state agricultural departments that rabi crop yields would be cut drastically. Wheat, gram, pea, barley and mustard - the traditional winter crops grown in Punjab, …
PRIME Minister P V Narasimha Rao warned a conference of state power ministers recently that the "agriculture sector (must) no longer be entitled to free or concessional power supply." But the ministers, reluctant to ruffle the rich farm lobby, instead passed a resolution to implement by March 31 a minimum …
IN 1987, the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi offered to set up an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Assam as one of the sops to quell the student agitation in the state. Five years later, the country's sixth IIT is all set to come up in Silagrant village in …
THE WOMEN'S Feature Service (WFS) is a news service that deals not just with equal rights for women, but with "development from a progressive, women's, or gender, perspective." It has transcended the Leftist tendency to see women as a force to be incorporated and led and instead stressed women's innovation, …
IRAQ OPENED its Third River, a vast drainage canal flowing midway between the Euphrates and the Tigris, in early December. The 565-km-long main canal, which took 40 years to complete because of revolutions, wars and sanctions, will reclaim 1.5 million ha of Iraq's agricultural land (of which 300,000 ha have …
Environmental space may be defined as the total quantity of natural resources that can be used on a sustainable basis, for example, the total quantity of carbon dioxide that can be released into the air by humans without damaging atmospheric processes like the global climate. To ensure equitable distribution of …
CLIMATE change brought about by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could lead to mass extinction of wildlife in isolated habitats (Conservation Biology, Vol 6 No 3). Global warming is expected to raise temperatures in the northern temperate latitudes by 2o to 6oC by …
A PROPOSAL for a forest convention that was thought to have died in Rio appears to be making a stealthy comeback. The Woods Hole Research Centre in the US is pushing a proposal to establish a scientific commission on forests and development. Involved in the Woods Hole effort is Ola …
LARGE-SCALE manufacture, transportation and application of chemical fertilisers are energy-intensive processes, which is why the hike in oil prices has made them more expensive. Moreover, the vast quantities of waste generated by the industrial and domestic sectors have led to extensive land and water pollution. The collective impact of these …
AT A RALLY of 300,000 people in Shegaon, Maharashtra, last November, the Shetkari Sanghatana put forward a new farm programme called chaturang sheti (four-pronged agriculture). Sanghatana leader Sharad Joshi argued the economic crises and the collapse of statist development models have resulted in the state being unable to extract surpluses …
IT IS A daring and formidable task to synthesise the insights of social and physical anthropology, physiology, epidemiology, micro-economics and macro-economics. This has been attempted with considerable success in this book by focussing primarily on survival strategies of rural households in "developing" countries in the face of both chronic and …
THE GENERAL degradation of Goa's environment is symbolised by the damage being done to its khazan lands, a unique, coastal, estuarine agro-system that plays a crucial role in the state's coastal ecology. Though Goa must import foodgrains to support its 12 lakh population, agriculture is the most important occupation in …
WHEN ZIMBABWE abandoned its traditional, drought-resistant maize in favour of new, high-yield varieties, it sowed the seeds for a famine that obliterated about half of the country's staple food crop this year. Failure of the rains is only part of the story: Farmers in Zimbabwe -- until recently regarded one …
