-The Hindu   We need freeways, but we also need forests. Crimes against women have been constantly in the news. But crimes against nature remain largely unreported. Given the current climate, with the Intelligence Bureau claiming that non-governmental organisations like the crusading international environmental group Greenpeace, are detrimental to India's progress, and with the ubiquitous ‘foreign hand' making a serendipitous comeback, such crimes are likely to become invisible, noticed only by those who have...

-The Hindustan Times   Going by our Intelligence Bureau (IB) and some of the voices in the government, anyone asking for the protection of the country's forests, its rivers or its coasts is anti-national and destroying the country's economy. I have spent the better part of my life working to save India's natural wealth from the assault of development (largely in vain it often seems). I told successive governments that the hundreds of...

-Down to Earth Grand old party of India renews some old promises and makes some new ones, but will Congress live up to its promises if it wins a third term? The Indian National Congress (INC) presented its manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Wedneday. The manifesto committee claimed the 48-page document was prepared after wide consultations by engaging millions of people, grassroots congress workers and every section of the...

-The Business Standard Chulhas - cook stoves of poor women who collect sticks, twigs, leaves and every other biomass material they can find to cook meals - are today at the centre of failing international action. The concern is that women are breathing toxic emissions from the stove and that these same emissions are also adding to the world's climate change burden. The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 established that...

-The Business Standard India has emerged as a "voice" in climate change and trade negotiations. The already industrialised countries say that India is obstinate, strident and unnecessarily obstructionist in crucial global debates. The problem is not that India is loud - this it needs to be. The fact is that, while ecological and economic globalisation are interlinked and irrevocable, there is a fundamental weakness in the overall rules that govern these...