It will be a major improvement over current system, says Jairam Ramesh The Union government is in the process of setting up a National Environmental Appraisal and Monitoring Authority (NEAMA) as part of efforts to bring in institutional reforms and improve environmental governance, Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said here on Tuesday. The Minister was delivering the second Lawrence Dana Pinkham Memorial Lecture at the convocation...

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre and all the States on a petition for a nationwide ban on endosulfan, given the pesticide's harmful effect on the people. A Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar issued the notice on the petition filed by the Democratic Youth Federation of India, after hearing senior counsel Krishnan Venugopal. It asked Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam to...

The outcome of Stockholm Convention to ban endosulfan capping a long-drawn campaign against the pesticide on health grounds may have brought cheers to the opponents but the domestic industry is crying foul suspecting an European link aiming to capture the Indian market. India and a few other developing countries extracted several exemptions, including a phase out period of 11 years to ban production and use of the toxic pesticide at the...

A LEAFY VILLAGE in Kerala, Pathanpara, never found access to India’s electricity grid. That is why for the last several years, this village has been generating its own electricity. Raju, a dhoti-clad cashew nut farmer, operates Pathanpara’s five kilowatt (KW) micro hydropower plant. He lives in the village and earns a salary of Rs 2,250, paid by the People’s Electricity Committee (PEC). The power generated is shared equally by the village,...

The Prime Minister-appointed panel on Food and Public Distribution System (F&PDS) headed by Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia has suggested that the current system of distributing PDS foodgrain per household should be replaced with per capita allocation. According to National Sample Survey (NSS) data, lower income households have more members per family than higher income households, the panel has said in its draft report. Justifying its suggestion as a “progressive...