Senior Congress leader and former sports minister Mani Shanker Aiyer has slammed the current United Progressive Alliance government under Dr Manmohan Singh for the huge amount of 'wasteful expenditure' being incurred on the Commonwealth games, saying that if a part of this money had been spent on the Bhopal Gas victims it would have brought the affected 'some relief'. The outspoken Aiyer, who was recently nominated to the Rajya Sabha, has...

They are based on faulty medical categorisation and miscalculated figures: survivors' organisations The report on the Bhopal gas leak submitted by the Group of Ministers (GoM) to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday drew mixed reactions from survivors' organisations here, which have decided to write to him to allow them a hearing at a Cabinet meet to be held on Friday. While welcoming it as “at least some hope after all,”...

Even as it pursues its case to make Dow Chemical pay for the clean-up of the Bhopal gas leak site, the Centre has decided to spend about Rs. 250 crore towards complete remediation. The entire process of decontaminating the one million tonnes of toxic waste at the site will be completed in two to three years, according to sources at the fourth meeting of the current Group of Ministers (GoM) on...

The Planning Commission’s advice to the Haryana government to levy a cess on agricultural power to raise funds for replenishing dwindling groundWater is wise counsel that is likely to fall on deaf ears. There is no denying that the continuous decline in groundWater levels across the subcontinent and weak attempts at replenishment constitute a grave threat to human security in this part of the world. Haryana is not a lonely...

In India, of the total cultivated area of around 140.30 million hectares only 60.86 million is irrigated and remaining 79.44 million hectares is rain-fed. Rain-fed crops account for 48 percent area under food crops and 68 percent of the area under non-food crops. Irrigated land accounts for nearly 55 percent of food production while rain-fed contributes just about 45 percent. Rain-fed farming is risk prone and is characterized by low...