Matters reached a head earlier this year when the prime minister assured the power ministers’ conference the government would decide within a month about power projects which were ready in all respects except for environment clearance. At a meeting convened by the prime minister’s office, the Kayamkulam project in Kerala …
The residents of Bamni were fed up with the constant feud between two farmers in their village. Their quarrels, which often came to fisticuffs, went on day and night, at home and in the farms, for years. Occasionally their neighbours had to rush them to a doctor after they had …
Recently, on discovering that I work in the forest department, a lady co-passenger in a flight asked, “Are you people really doing anything for the forests?” The unconcealed taunt set me and my friends discussing with the sceptic the scenario of green governance in India. How are we managing our …
Rocks and fossils tell many stories. They contain records of life on earth. But the geological record is fundamentally patchy. Even the most rapidly deposited sedimentary rock is marked by periods of non-deposition, or even erosion. So rocks need a narrator to tell their story. Science journalist Brian Switek is …
A TV show that claimed to show the “reality of life” of an Amazonian tribe has been slammed for faking scenes and mistranslating interviews to perpetuate stereotypes. Mark and Olly: Living with the Machigenga was shown on the Travel Channel and on the BBC last year. The show claimed to …
In the first week of August, the Angolan police arrested radio journalist Adao Tiago for reporting on a bizarre wave of mass fainting. Since April, over 800 people, mostly teenagers, have fainted after complaining of sore throats and eyes, shortness of breath and coughs. Angola’s interior minister Sebastiao Martins claims …
Using cell phones to broadcast text messages reminding health workers in Kenya how to treat children’s malaria increased the number of cases handled correctly, a study has found. The study by researchers from Oxford and the Kenya Medical Research Institute was published in The Lancet. It involved 119 health workers …
Kazakhstan is making it tough for government employees who are not proficient in Kazakh, the country’s state language. On August 10, Alikhan Baymenov, head of the state agency for civil service affairs, announced plans for mandatory monthly language tests for state employees. He said, in addition to tests on computers, …
It was meant to stop the wasteful practice of catching fish only to throw them back into the sea to die. It hoped to change British dining habits, by tempting the public to try previously unheard of fish like cornish pollack and the ugly but tender megrim. But celebrity chef …
WANT to know which migratory birds do your region host? Or perhaps, you want to check on the conservation status of a bird species. The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) has a website on avian ecology giving exactly this kind of information. The site, set up in collaboration with the …
A hacker group has attacked Blackberry’s website after the company said it would assist the police investigating riots in the UK. On August 10, Team Poison defaced the official Blackberry blog, posting a message that threatened the firm with retaliation if it handed users’ data to the authorities. UK police …
When the Ministry of Corporate Affairs tables the Companies Bill of 2009 in the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament, the members will put their heads together over a thorny recommendation: every year corporates should earmark two per cent of their net profits towards social causes, better known as Corporate Social …
For sheer persistence you have to hand it to Novartis. Ever since its blood cancer drug Glivec was refused a patent in 2006, the Swiss multinational has been fighting India’s patent law, or at least a crucial section of it, with the patent authorities and in the courts. With case …
Some 40 years ago an experiment began in Arabari forest range of West Bengal that caught the fancy of the nation. The forest authorities roped in the people living in the area in regenerating degraded forests. In return they offered them a share in forest resources and revenue. It worked. …
Madhya Pradesh set out on a generous note. The state’s 1990 JFM resolution promised 20 per cent of the net profit from the felling of timber to forest protection committees in case of dense forest and 30 per cent of the net profit in the case of degraded forests. In …
Harvest time has come and gone but the residents of Sitarampeth village in Chandrapur district did not get a penny in return for protecting nearly 300 ha of reserve forest for over a decade. “No valuation has ever been done of the work done by us,” says Rambhau Dhande, a …
Beyond Jethiabhai Basawa’s mud house in the foothills of Aravali extends a 75-hectare patch of barren land. It was once lush bamboo forest worth Rs 9 lakh. After joining the JFM programme in 1996, his village Munkapada in Rajpipla district had nurtured it in the hope of making some money. …
Andhra Pradesh is the only state that claims to have calculated exact timber and bamboo revenue shares transferred to communities under JFM. The World Bank funded the programme with generous loans of Rs 1,000 crore for 15 years till March 2009. Benefits shared are impressive. According to the World Bank’s …
The concept of JFM is alluring enough to keep people engaged in conservation for years. But when it comes to sharing the fruits it is a practical joke. For every hundred rupees earned from timber sale a JFM committee usually gets only Rs 17.5 in cash, thanks to the forest …
The JFM programme faces existential crisis. On the one hand, pieces of legislation like the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, and the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996, have come into existence, giving rights to tribals and forest dwellers over forest resources and their management. On the other …
