A bidi-smoking petty contractor who suddenly bought two Boleros and a former newspaper hawker who zipped about Chhattisgarh’s jungles in a Toyota may hold the key to a question bugging the custodians of national security. What the police want to know is: are business houses paying off the Maoists to be able to operate deep inside central India’s mineral-rich guerrilla zones? Chhattisgarh police say that when contractor B.K. Lala’s bank account suddenly...

Three non-government members of a central body tasked with the Ganga’s clean-up have quit after accusing the government of “gross negligence” towards the river’s worsening condition. Magsaysay winner Rajendra Singh, Ravi Chopra and Rashid Hyatt Siddiqui have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who chairs the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), saying the body has been reduced to a “toothless tiger”. The committee has around 20 members, including senior officials and...

As non-governmental organisations question the relevance of the World Water Forum being held here this week and slam its "corporate" nature, the United Nations says that a coordinated approach to managing and allocating water is critical. The fourth edition of the triennial World Water Development Report (WWDR), which BRIngs together the work of 28 U.N.-Water members and partners is being officially launched Monday at the Forum. It stresses that water "underpins...

Parliament must use budget session to discuss key pending bills The budget session of Parliament begins today. The last few sessions have been characterised by disruptions and consequent loss of productive time. To see one indicator, the 15th Lok Sabha, half-way through its term, has lost 30 per cent of scheduled time — the worst ever. As a result, many important bills have been pending. It is to be seen whether...

The myth that Fukushima radiation levels were too low to harm humans persists, a year after the meltdown.  A March 2, 2012 New York Times article quoted Vanderbilt University professor John Boice: “there’s no opportunity for conducting epidemiological studies that have any chance for success – the doses are just too low.”  Wolfgang Weiss of the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation also recently said doses observed...