-The Indian Express The reality of rural distress is sinking in only now for policymakers. There can be no better illustration of the vagaries of the weather than Chennai’s streets being inundated with water and the second India-South Africa cricket test in Bangalore suffering washout due to rains, even as drought stalks much of the country. That really is the case today, with Tamil Nadu, Kerala, southern and coastal Karnataka, Rayalaseema...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Madras high court on Friday stayed the government order cancelling Greenpeace India's registration, observing that the Tamil Nadu Registrar of Societies (RoS) had not followed principles of natural justice. The Tamil Nadu RoS had cancelled the registration of Greenpeace India -- the environmental NGO that has been campaigning against air pollution and the unsustainable use of natural resources in India -- earlier this month. After getting...

-Hindustan Times Heavy rains and deadly flooding in south India, a region that saw a killer heat wave this summer, are weather patterns that appear to fit the scenarios of climate change in India, IMD chief Laxman Singh Rathore has said. “They (emerging weather patterns) fit the larger picture of climate change predicted by Indian scientists as well as global reports,” Rathore told HT. Episodes of excessive rainfall are increasing while the...

-The Hindu Cyclonic storms on Tamil Nadu’s 1,076-km coastline are not unusual, and at least once in two years there is some disaster or the other. The common thread running through every such instance is that all claims of preparedness are invariably exposed as either hollow or woefully inadequate. The focus, as well as any claim to administrative efficiency, is solely on rescue and relief operations. What the government is able...

As Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh fight the fury of flood caused by annual northeast monsoon, a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on the natural disaster in Uttarakhand, which took place in June 2013, has been made available in the public domain recently. The CAG report discloses how various development activities in the state flouted guidelines issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Expert Committee on glaciers...