India has blocked entry to a former US naval ship heading for break-up at a Scrap yard on its west coast, citing environmental and pollution concerns. The ministry of environment and forests said it inspected Platinum-II and found the ship contained toxic material.   There are also concerns that the ship has been brought into India with false documentation, the ministry says. The ship reached Indian waters last month, but was...

The idea behind the MP Local Area Development (MPLAD) Scheme is that since our MPs are people’s representatives and are supposedly interacting with the masses on a regular basis, they are best placed to know what the people want. Thus, if an MP has funds at his/her disposal, s/he would be able to utilise it without having to go through the exercise that usually delays disbursal of funds and implementing...

There is a real fear that the Kyoto Protocol will be killed soon Two years ago, amidst much fanfare, a United Nations ministerial meeting in the fabled island of Bali adopted a “roadmap” for tackling climate change. The roadmap laid down two tracks for progress, corresponding to the two international agreements on climate change — the Kyoto Protocol and the Framework Convention on Climate Change. With regard to the first...

The Centre has approved the first legally tenable import of electronic waste for responsible recycling, angering environmental groups who say millions of kilograms of domestic e-waste is recycled hazardously. The environment and forest ministry has approved the import of 8,000 tonnes of e-waste by Attero Recycling, a company that has set up an integrated recycling plant for safe extraction of metals near Roorkee. India generates nearly 400,000 tonnes of domestic...

THE LAUNCH of free market liberalisation in 1991 triggered widespread prosperity for the Indian middle classes, making them the showpiece of India’s muchfêted economic boom. But little has ever changed for the bulk of the country’s poor, hundreds of millions of who continue to barely Scrape through from day to day, doomed to extreme poverty and, consequently, malnutrition, disease and death. For decades, many among these millions have survived, however...