The Meena Gupta Committee formed by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to look into forest rights and other issues involving Posco project, today visited the Jatadhari river mouth, site of the project’s proposed captive port, in its second trip to the state in less than one month. Posco proposed to set up a captive port at Jatadhari river mouth, 10 km from Paradip port, on 500 acres of...

Contaminated water sources and the virtual absence of health care claim dozens of lives in the State, now in the grip of cholera. COME monsoon and the backward regions of Orissa are in the grip of water-borne diseases. This year too has been no different. According to official figures, 150 people had died of cholera and diarrhoea in the State as on September 15. Unofficial reports put the toll at more...

Activists and many residents blame a hydel project for the growing frequency of landslides in some Uttarakhand villages. THE nearly 3,500 residents of Bhatwadi village along the Uttarkashi-Gangotri highway in Uttarakhand saw their world come crashing down around them on the night of August 12/13. A massive landslide that hit the village formed cracks up to five metres wide on the highway and these crept up the hills to over 100...

Next month, the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, one of the most powerful laws enacted in independent India, completes half a decade in the cause of transparent and accountable administration. It enables, on demand, access to information the State and Central governments have in their possession. It empowers Indian citizens to ask for and get specific information, subject to certain norms, from a Public Authority, “thus making its functionaries...

With a gas-guzzler of an economy, India had been spending tens of billions of dollars annually to import petroleum. And so its 2009 policy on biofuels mandated that by 2017, India would have enough biofuel production to cover at least 20 percent of the country’s oil consumption. The government has in fact been encouraging the cultivation of jatropha curcas for the past seven years, believing that would be the fastest way...