A fast growing economy is a thirsty economy and India is no exception—with the country’s water supply already under great strain, India must reassess its consumption to meet escalating demands for water to produce food and energy. Business-as-usual water practices cannot remain the same in India as the economy and its demand for freshwater grows over the coming decades. With an astounding 75% of freshwater already used for agriculture in India,...

Can we afford to leave MG-NREGA alone? Why is the civil society crying foul? Are the rural activists demanding too much? Is the UPA-II trying to take back what UPA-I gave before the elections? Let us face it, the MG-NREGA is in a big crisis. NAC members like Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze have alleged (See links below) that the present remuneration of rural workers is declining by the day and it...

Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...

While renewable energy was always considered more desirable from the point of view of environment protection, its importance has increased several times in these times of climate change. Solar energy is particularly seen as a very promising source in energy planning for the future in tropical countries like India. Interest in realising the potential of solar energy is fast increasing and organisations which have been pioneers in solar energy are...

Vedanta, Posco and Sindhudurg. The issue is the same — the need for a well-thought-out policy relating to extractive and resource-based industry. The government’s withdrawal of mining permission to Vedanta on the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa’s backward Kalahandi district; the divided verdict by the Gupta Committee on the Posco iron ore project; and the environment ministry’s concern on 49 mining licences issued by the Maharashtra government for bauxite and iron...