-The Telegraph Reclaimed from Maoists, the natural reserves of Saranda are up against unscrupulous adversaries. At least four mining firms have been extracting iron ore and manganese against their sanctioned capacities in this West Singhbhum region since 2008 right under the nose of the mines department and Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board (JSPCB). The startling fact came to light this January after the two laggard state offices replied to separate RTI petitions filed...

Imagine you are a citizen racing across newspapers rapid fire. As you flip the pages you run across events like the Vedanta mining case, the Koodankulam nuclear controversy, the debate on poverty and reports about climate change. Each of these can be a life-threatening event and none of them have a life support system of knowledge which allows them to be debated in the open. The basic information comes from...

-The Telegraph   The New York Times has reported that Wal-Mart, the US-based retail giant, hushed up an internal investigation sometime after the company was told of a bribery campaign to obtain licences and facilitate rapid expansion in Mexico. Some of the alleged instances of bribery are certain to ring a bell in India where it is not too difficult to bend rules for a price. The New York Times said its “examination...

What better elixir than pure water? Thanks to Naandi, a safe drinking water programme, 3,90,536 households in rural areas across four Indian states are benefited.  Naandi, headquartered in Hyderabad, is a not-for-profit organization which works with governing bodies in rural areas, including Karnataka, to provide clean drinking water to the poor. So what really is their modus operandi? It is essentially a community-run programme where the local governing body or gram...

Smoking kills, but most smokers still don’t know how. One in two Indian smokers isn’t aware that tobacco addiction can lead to stroke and 38% that it can cause heart disease.   These are some of the startling findings of a World Heart Federation report that will be released at the World Congress of Cardiology (WCC) in Dubai on Saturday. India is high on tobacco addiction. It has 138 million smokers and 28%...