Letters
Solar energy is everybody's business
Solar mission is too important to let doubtful dealings hijack it
Ganguly panel confirms pesticide in soft drinks
June 30, 2003: The day conservation policy could have changed
Usually, the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) does manage to stick to its guns in the face of adversity, or even rationality. But …
A toy called CRZ
The original coastal regulation zone (CRZ) rules passed in February 1991 had seven sections. They have been amended nearly twice that many times …
The virtual reality of being Indian
The remoteness of 190 villages in Orissa's undivided Koraput district is an elegy on governance. Over five decades, living in islands inside huge …
The shadow of a calamity
Among disasters, drought is the easiest to predict and manage. The Indian Meteorological Department's forecast of a "below normal" monsoon in …
Slum today, gone tomorrow
If the Union cabinet endorses a recent decision of the group of ministers, about 35,000 shanties will have to be removed from Mumbai's Santa Cruz …
India must focus on rainfed farming
There was a time when it was said that the Indian budget was a gamble on the monsoons. That is not the case any more, with industrial production …
Tryst with rain
Following the monsoon failure of 1999-2000, two states - Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh - launched crash programmes to encourage water harvesting. An …
Fall from grace
From archangels to archfiends - the reputation of IAS officers has certainly nosedived. Anil Agarwal, director, Centre for Science and Environment,…
Common knowledge
Let the government begin its long march into Freedom of information by making its proposed bill public even before it goes to Parliament
Can government be its own watchdog?
The Union government has finally set itself free. No longer will it have to perform the dirty, stressful and thankless task of redressing …
Puritanism will not cure AIDS
Union health minister Sushma Swaraj is brandishing a new poultice to wrap around the AIDS menace. It is a purifying prescription called '…
Boon or menace?
Public interest litigations come under a cloud once again as the Prime Minister questions their viability
A beaten path
Suresh Prabhu is by no means breaking new ground. He is merely mouthing the same promise made time and again, but never fulfilled, by his predecessors
Win some, lose most
To find out what the Union Budget has in store for science and the environment, Down To Earth spoke to environmentalists and representatives …
Reach the last person
Will that crippling scourge called polio be wiped out from the face of the earth by the end of this year? The World Health Organization (WHO) …
The unaccounted wealth that leaves our shores
The Indian government invests Rs 34 lakh to educate each IIT graduate. It therefore has the moral authority to get him or her to work for the …
One goal, two roads
Non-governmental organisations are taking the government's proposal for cooperation in poverty alleviation with a healthy pinch of salt
We propose, greens dispose
...thus decried Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, on the issue of power projects which may have let the power into but thrown the ecology in a state …
Act of omission
The government's latest commission on water may end up churning out myopic, big-dam-centred policies
Pilfering citizens' rights
The latest Gowdaspeak is a draft bill that would restrict people's access to courts to agitate against environmental mismanagement
"Ad" nauseum: Science and technology
It is "payback" time for the scientific establishment too! The incumbent Indian government, keen to amass political capital well before the next …