Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Jagan Prasad Tehriya Vs State of Uttar Pradesh dated 23/05/2025. The applicant has alleged large-scale illegal felling of green trees within the Agra district, Uttar Pradesh. The application revealed instances of illegal tree felling at Fatehabad, Sadar, Kiraoli and Agra …
What was it that led you to abandon a lucrative career abroad and return to your country? Was it your rural roots? No, though I was born on December 27, 1941, in Uttarpara village of Chittagong district, I had hardly any rural connections. I was schooled in Calcutta, then at …
RICH INDIVIDUALS usually tend to be arrogant. So do rich institutions, such as the World Bank, which is prepared to accept, albeit after much pushing and prodding, that it may have been wrong in hindsight. But it is definitely not prepared to accept, at any given moment, that it is …
WHEN FORMER Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi announced the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY), he received more brickbats than bouquets from both the media and the intellectuals because they saw in it a populist measure initiated by a beleaguered prime minister to win an election. But there was more to it than …
TWO HUNDRED years ago, Thomas Malthus had asked at what point man's population would exceed his means of subsistence. The world's population then had not reached 1 billion. Today, a year before the population conference in Cairo, the total number of people in the world is fast approaching 5.5 billion. …
"RANTHAMBORE is like a leper's pock mark on this district," says a senior citizen of Sawai Madhopur, the town near which this important national park is located. The comment sums up the disdain in which many Sawai Madhopur residents hold the park. It also puts into doubt the government's nature …
A PROPOSED sewage treatment plant has trapped the 6.49-sq-km temple town of Guruvayur in controversy, pitting its residents against the villagers of nearby Chakankandam, where a 1.5 million litres per-day sewage disposal plant is to be located. Guruvayur residents held a seven-day sit-in recently to press for early implementation of …
A pilot project to install energy-efficient, solar lanterns as an employment generation scheme in the northeastern states is to be implemented soon by the Department of Non-conventional Energy Sources (DNES), the Department of Science and Technology and the North-eastern Council. If the programme succeeds, installation will be expanded to a …
I LIVE in Delhi, India's capital and one of its oldest cities. Seven times it has experienced a violent death and like the phoenix, seven times it has risen from its ashes. The city's historical monuments span its founding by the Pandavas who called it Indraprastha to its seventh incarnation, …
What has gone wrong with Indian science? Does it lack a personality of its own or does it lack confidence in its personality? You ask what is wrong with Indian science. May I ask what is wrong with Indian society, our management, our priorities and what have you? Why just …
JUST 5 km north of Kerala's state capital, the 4,000 fisherfolk of Thumba village ready fishing lines and canoes, oblivious of the roar from the Indian Space Research Organisation's launch site nearby. Their catch is mainly kozhuva, hooked along the 7-km natural reef. But with the arrival of fishing trawlers, …
EVEN WHILE the government is privatising and cutting subsidies, paper and forest-based industries are about to receive in response to their clamouring the biggest bankroll of all: natural wealth. At a recent seminar in Delhi on raw material supply for these industries, the ministry of environment and forests (MEF) hinted …
THOUGH Haryana is an agriculturally developed state, its Rewari district is poor and handicapped by lack of drinking water, sharp gander inequality and educational backwardness. Rewari averages 65 cm of rain annually, not enough for efficient fuming and its salinity is such that cultivating the undulating stretches of the Arivall! …
WHEN ALL the good-sized trees had vanished from the forest around Khudamunda hamlet in Sambalpur district, Orissa, a villager went into a reserve forest nearby in search of poles for his hut. He was caught and beaten by a forest guard, who then took a hefty sum and a goat …
VILLAGERS in Lapanga, Sambalpur district, assert they initiated forest protection as long ago as 1936, making Lapanga one of the first villages to do so. The villagers protect about 250 ha of forest, of which 75 ha. are ryoti (private) land, donated for use as a community-run forest. The protection …
Many international organisations have expressed concern for the people to be displaced by the Sardar Sarovar dam project on the Narmada in Gujarat, but the fate of those already ousted by other dams on the river goes unnoticed. Recently, one of them, 65-year-old Sunderbai, died of starvation a few months …
SALINE and degraded soils, inadequate water, poor quality seeds and the lack of means to own land -- these are the main problems that Indian peasant women face. And this conclusion was arrived at not by agrarian economists or bureaucrats, but by peasant women from the villages of north India. …
WESTERN urbanisation began with the Industrial Revolution and was accompanied by both economic and social development. But in India and most other developing countries, urbanisation does not reflect development. India's urban population increased from 10.84 per cent in 1901 to 25.72 per cent in 1991, but the majority of Indians …
THREE years ago, the state government directed the Uttar Pradesh Ground Water Board (UPGWB) to carry out a detailed survey of the fluorosis-affected villages in Unnao district. But it has yet to release the Rs 7 lakh that such a survey would cost. Despite this, the UP government recently directed …
GIRISH Karnad's genius for turning mythology to contemporary use surfaces once again in his exquisite and disturbing film Cheluvi. Based on a fable about a young woman who could turn into a flowering tree at will with the help of a mantra, it has a not-so-subtle environmental message. Cheluvi was …
A CLASH of interests between traditional fisherfolk and owners of modern fishing trawlers is nothing new in Kerala's coastal districts. But the normally quiet village of Anchuthengu in Kollam district is caught in just such a struggle and has been riven by unprecedented acts of violence since last October. The …
