The fertiliser sector in India has been through difficult times in recent years. Stagnant production, no fresh investment and poor financial health of the units were accompanied by high level of import, imbalanced use of nutrients and deteriorating soil health. Mounting subsidy bill posed a serious fiscal management problem to the government. Industry has been pursuing with the government for appropriate reforms to ensure health and growth for both the...

The Karnataka government is getting ready to host the Global Investors Meet (3- 4 June). A similar jamboree held some years ago, when S M Krishna was chief minister, had been a resounding flop, but this one, the government believes, would be a runaway success. There has been no dearth of publicity for the event in the media and there has been no shortage of roadshows on foreign soil. A...

The recent high-profile cobalt radiation exposure case in Delhi is a warning signal for bigger disasters waiting to happen. While the reported incident is not commonplace, India is home to a large and rapidly growing inventory of hazardous waste. Much of this is handled by the poor in an extremely crude manner without observing any safety norms. Part of this hazardous waste is even dumped in landfill sites where many...

Visitors making their way along the muddy track leading to the Gossainbarie tea estate in India's north-eastern Assam state will be greeted by huge mounds of cow dung, rotting water hyacinth, as well as and fish and meat waste. But this is no cause for alarm - the tea-estate has gone organic and is following the principles of India's ancient plant medicine Vriksh Ayurveda. "This is our fertiliser because we don't...

For nearly three decades, Selvi V. has lived in a village in the Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu, 75km from Chennai, without a toilet. And there really wasn’t any need felt to have one in this family of daily wage farm labourers. Selvi and her now-married daughter would wake up either early every morning or wait until dark to relieve themselves in a thicket of thorny shrubs a little distance...