The widening chasm between India and Bharat is perhaps best reflected in the manner in which electricity is consumed. The neon-lights of Mumbai and Delhi beckon many with their glitter, but large swathes of territory across the country literally remain in the dark more than six decades after political independence. The government remains obsessed till today with building mega power projects — even our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had second...

Chhattisgarh announced a proposed investment of more than Rs 1,77,000 crore in the state. Until October 2008, it had signed over a hundred mous with companies like Jindals, Tata Steel and Essar. After a couple of months of this announcement, a bureaucrat heading the state environment regulatory body resigned. “Development is the preferred option, provided the carrying capacity is available. There cannot be a trade-off at the cost of the health...

The plight of the hungry in developing countries is needlessly aggravated by farmers losing up to half of their crops after gathering the harvest, the United Nations agricultural agency said today, stressing that adequate investment and training could drastically cut the losses. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said that excessive rainfall, droughts, extreme temperatures, contamination by micro-organisms, and premature harvesting are among the causes of these post-harvest losses, which...

India will soon join a select space club by launching two dedicated satellites in polar orbit to study climate change through atmospheric research and detection of greenhouse gases, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair said Sunday. 'The satellites will be launched in 2010 and 2011. The first will be a 50 kg micro-satellite to conduct atmospheric research. The second will be a remote sensing satellite to monitor emission...

Despite a 25 percent deficit in rainfall, a village in Udaipur still manages to fill up its water tanks to the brim. WHEN HE first visited Dilwara, on the outskirts of Udaipur, Andre Ling, then a student from England, saw the village’s only pond, surrounded by filthy stumps of limestone and mud, disappear due to rank neglect over two summers. It was 2003 and Rajasthan had recorded a 45 percent...