The city-based Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), which ruled out a tsunami threat for the Indian Ocean on Friday, reconfirmed on Saturday that the sea levels in the Indian Ocean were not different from what had been anticipated. INCOIS issued the first bulletin just seven minutes after the massive undersea quake near the east coast of Honshu in Japan on Friday. The Indian Early Tsunami Warning System, based on...

Agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan called on Wednesday for documenting indigenous farming knowledge which coped with monsoon vagaries. In earlier days when there was no irrigation, farmers were prepared for floods and droughts. The climate-resilient farming was a way of life in those days, and people went in for mixed cropping. Dr. Swaminathan said a publication could be brought out on procedures adopted by farmers and how effective they were in coping with...

An impact assessment report by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) here has come down heavily on the proposed nuclear power plant at Jaitapur in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra stating that the project will have a “huge negative impact on social and environment development” as it is sitting on a high to moderate severity earthquake zone. The TISS findings in Perception Matter- People’s Report- Social Impact Assessment of Jaitapur Madban Nuclear...

The performance of the upcoming biotechnology regulatory authority of India (BRAI), would be supervised by an inter-ministerial governing board, even though the time frame in which the regulatory body would come up is not clear. This is a clear deviation from the previous stance, which conceptualised the setting up of the regulatory body under the direct control of the department of biotechnology. “The Bill provides for setting up of inter-ministerial governing...

ASSAM is on the brink of a movement, like the one that ended with the 1984 Assam Accord. This time the concern is not illegal immigrants but dams proposed upstream in Arunachal Pradesh. In the past year and a half people in Assam have held a number of protests. The latest one was on September 10 when Union Minister of Environm ent and Forests Jairam Ramesh visited Guwahati to consult academics,...