The government must stop dilly-dallying over the project and apply the law regardless of the fact that it is India's single largest foreign investment proposal. TWO giant metallurgical projects, both in Orissa. Both promoted by big multinational corporations with tremendous influence. Both opposed by environmental and tribal rights activists because they would displace vulnerable people and destroy fragile ecosystems. Both backed strongly by State-level and national lobbies that claim they...

The CAG indicts Uttarakhand for pursuing hydel power projects indiscriminately without concern for the environment. IN a severe indictment of the Uttarakhand government, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India said it was pushing the State towards a major environmental catastrophe by following a highly ambitious hydropower policy. In a report titled “Performance Audit of Hydropower Development Through Private Sector Participation”, which was released recently, the CAG substantiates the allegations...

Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh announced in Sariska on Wednesday Rs.30 crore for shifting villages from the Sariska Tiger Reserve. On a visit to the reserve after the death of CP1, one of the five tigers released there as part of the re-introduction of tigers, Mr. Ramesh expressed his concern over the incident but gave the go-ahead to his team there for the continuation of...

Tribals living in and around the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa's Kalahandi district are up in arms once again. The Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, an organisation of tribals that has been opposing Vedanta's alumina refinery, on Saturday said it would intensify the agitation. The announcement came a day after a group of pro-Vedanta organisations approached the Orissa High Court challenging a recent order of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests withdrawing the terms...

The first-ever annual employment survey by the Labour Bureau under the Union Ministry of Labour points to a “jobless economic growth” last fiscal year. During the bureau’s survey period 2009-10 — also the year in which India’s gross domestic product grew by 7.4 per cent — unemployment was 9.4 per cent. The National Sample Survey Organisation, using its Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2007-08, had painted a rosy unemployment figure of 2.8...