-The Hindu ‘Report has permitted uncontrolled quarrying in most parts of ghats' Kochi (Kerala): The Kasturirangan report has thrown open the ecologically sensitive areas of Western Ghats to mindless exploitation which would seriously hazard ecology, according to its critics. According to member of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) V.S. Vijayan: the report has in a way permitted uncontrolled quarrying in most parts of the ghats regions of the State. Those...

-The Telegraph Thiruvananthapuram: The Centre's move to implement an ecology panel's report on conservation of the Western Ghats has provoked a call for a 48-hour civil disobedience agitation by the Catholic Church in Kerala, starting Sunday midnight. The Church claims the K. Kasturirangan report, notified on Wednesday, will hit the livelihoods of farmers living in the "high ranges" - foothill areas bordering the forests - and force them to relocate. Green activists deny...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Environment ministry has issued directions to six state governments prohibiting development activities including mining and quarrying in the 60,000 sq km ecologically sensitive area of Western Ghats. The ministry's direction came weeks after it gave approval to a controversial report on Western Ghats prepared by the K Kasturirangan-led panel which recommended prohibition on development activities in 37 per cent of natural landscape that has high biological richness. In its order...

-DNA An allocation of Rs 17,700 crore in the 2013-2014 Union Budget but not a single accountable rupee spent for pre-school education or a plate of food for the homeless children in Mumbai. Yoshita Sengupta investigates the absence of homeless children from ICDS registers Mumbai: In 2010, Ms. Rekha, a homeless woman living on the footpath in Mumbai in her last month of pregnancy, slipped while trying to cross a wall. She...

-The Hindu Villages get infrastructure to conserve water and recharge wells Madurai: The district's dry pockets in the Usilampatti and Sedapatti blocks are alive with development activity aimed at mitigating the hardship faced by drought-hit farmers. Watershed and percolation ponds are being created in these regions. On the lines of initiatives taken by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and non-governmental organisations, the State government is establishing watershed projects to...