Reply by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in compliance to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order dated January 21, 2024 in the matter of ‘News item titled “Feeling anxious? Toxic air could be to blame” appearing in Times of India dated 10.10.2023’. NGT had directed CPCB to file a …
DESPITE India being a country with an ancient tradition of building houses which used little energy in construction and maintenance, the majority of our government housing and construction agencies have been blind to it. Ironically, in a country where 65 million of the 118 million existing houses are made of …
HOMES were rebuilt, but the pastures vanished. Money came pouring in but trades were lost. And now the reconstruction of the quake-devastated Marathwada villages by urban thinkers resembled a Babelian confusion. The result: the rehabilitation of the people ended up disrupting the village ecosystem. "Everyone -- the government, the NGOs …
A MAJOR disaster is not enough. It takes censure and orders from the courts to shake the somnolent bureaucracy into action. The still-traumatised Marathwada quake victims have created history by resorting to public interest litigations (PIL) to ensure relief through the natural disaster management efforts of the government. "Such legal …
While the Marathwada quake victims waited for succour, lucre and its distribution ensnared the NGOs, the voluble critics of government's callous habits, in attritious squabblings. S Parasuraman's paper on NGO activity, presented at the workshop, does not exactly do them pride. In the aftermath of the earthquake, more than 130 …
SUDDENLY, everything was gone: home and hearth, families and friends. The earth had danced a tarantella. And thousands in Marathwada joined the army of the living dead. How much time is enough to erase memories of such an upheaval? In the post-disaster period in Marathwada, mental health did not receive …
Residents of Geneva, Switzerland, have opposed the building of 12 palaces by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The king had received permission to build the 12 palaces and an underground car park, which are to cost about $30 million, next door to his Geneva residence. The protestors, however, say that …
IT IS painted bright red with big black spots and looks like a cross between a lady bug and a toy car. It is the ultra-mini Haishen or the "car for the masses" that is about to hit the gigantic domestic automobile car market in China. This tiny vehicle has …
Residents of Bhubaneswar were in for a hot shock when the temperature soared to 46.3 degrees Celsius on May 7. According to environmental scientists, the climatic disorder was caused by the large-scale construction of concrete houses and falling of the groundwater levels. Bhubaneswar has now earned the dubious distinction as …
Enter the "smart" window: an insulated, multi-pane, electrically-controlled glazing that can be used to control the amount of light coming through and rejecting excess heat, thereby obviating the need for air-conditioning. Though most components of such a window are still laboratory prototypes, a few semi-intelligent glazings have already hit the …
ASHOK Gadgil, Arthur Rosenfeld and others at the University of California at Berkeley have proposed "low-E (emissivity)" windows with coatings to reduce heat transfers, can be a viable option for developing countries because they will save energy and reduce peak-hour demands. But the windows proposed by Gadgil and company are …
JUST 55 seconds in duration, it left 1,000 people dead. The earthquake, measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale, which devastated the hills of Uttarkashi, Tehri Garhwal and Chamoli districts in UP last October, also left 20 per cent of the houses in the region totally destroyed or severely damaged. What …
"EARTHQUAKES don't kill, buildings do," says John Beynon, principal architect at UNESCO's regional office in Bangkok. Today, people are shifting to "killer buildings" as they give up their traditional building technologies in favour of modern designs and materials. This disastrous transformation has taken place not just in Garhwal, but idso …
