How did your trip to Niyamgiri and Vedanta’s mining project there come about? I’ve been a human rights, social justice and environment protection advocate for the last 30 years. I am the founder and chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation. I also love India and have a long relationship with this country. Many people know this. This is why Action Aid approached me to meet Sitaram Kulisika, a tribal...

Days after several persons were hospitalised after exposure to radioactive waste at a West Delhi scrap market, it emerges that the only data available with the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) is almost three years old. And even that is alarming: 5,300 tonnes of hazardous waste was generated in the Capital every year, according to the survey last conducted in 2007. The state pollution control body has no information on...

In the wake of reports of violation of ethical guidelines and exploitation during the “clinical trials” of HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccine, meant to prevent cervical Cancer among women, the Centre on Wednesday advised the State governments to suspend the vaccine programme until the issue is settled. Director-General of the Indian Council of Medical Research V.M. Katoch told The Hindu that he had asked the Health Ministry, the State governments and...

Poverty attracts two kinds of policy interventions. The first hopes to eradicate it and the second wants to keep the poor alive. In India, our prime effort has always been, right from the days of antodaya, to somehow keep the poor ticking, even at the lowest levels of subsistence. The NREGA scheme saves the impoverished from starvation on a six-monthly basis. We see the same mindset at work in the...

Biotech technicians neither have the knowledge of gene ecology nor the expertise in multiple disciplines.    After the minister of environment Jairam Ramesh announced a moratorium on Bt brinjal, article after article in the media has denounced the decision, saying such decisions should be left to ‘scientists.’ The issue is however not science vs anti-science. It is reductionist science vs systems science. The moratorium took into account the best of science. Many...