India
From forestry to productive forestry
My position on the need to re-position forests in development (see ‘Rethink growth with forest capital’, Down To Earth, May 16-31) has brought me a huge response. On the one hand are those who argue that functions of forests already include conservation vital to life; they need to be valued and protected. The unsaid (and often stressed) corollary is that any discussion on the need to improve productivity of forests through the involvement of people needs to be shunned. The stretched and simplistic positioning of this view is that forests and people cannot go together.
Rethink growth with forest capital
Can you love tigers but hate forests? This is the question that troubled me as I visited the middle of India last fortnight. I was in Nagpur, where local politicians, conservationists and officials were discussing what needed to be done in this chronically poor and backward region endowed with forests and tiger habitats.
Shifting sands of (mal) development
We were on a beach. Somewhere close to Puducherry. The sight was surreal: half-smashed houses with wide open fronts, people still living in them. The devastation was caused not by a sea storm or a cyclone, but by the eroded beach. The sea had crept up to the village; there was no protection between the sea and the village.
High risk
Problem: Tall buildings risky in high seismic zones; Status: Hill-stations are getting concretised and growing vertically; Challenge: Use local construction material; regulate traffic
Lies, Damn Lies and Endosulfan
KUSHAL P S YADAV blows the lid off dirty tactics adopted to give clean chit to endosulfan
Endosulfan Conspiracy
A link was established between the unusually high incidence of deformities and diseases in Padre â€' a village in Kerala’s Kasaragod district â€' and endosulfan, an organochlorine pesticide.
Light on mercury
Regulations to check mercury pollution take backseat as Centre promotes fluorescent light
Pesticide residues in bottled water
Packaged drinking water or natural mineral water is everywhere. It is now available in pouches, cups, bottles and bulky transparent jars.
Let there be CFL
When the kerosene supply went down sharply in Nagpur four years ago, Bharat Parihar's business of renting out Petromax lamps to vegetable vendors began to look fragile.
Change is in the process
One way of managing waste do not produce it
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