-The Hindu Research shows that they alter rivers and their fish communities drastically It seems to stand to reason that small dams cause less environmental problems than large ones. But the first study on small hydroPower projects in India proves that they cause as severe ecological impacts as big dams, including altering fish communities and changing river flows. Such hydroprojects, which usually generate less than 25 megawatts of Power and consist of a...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In an attempt to revamp drug price regulation in the country, while strengthening implementation and market monitoring, the government is set to restructure the regulator, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA). The authority, which is expected to be re-christened soon, will be replaced by a board or a council with four full-time members, including the chairman. The other three members — an economist, a costing specialist and...

-The Indian Express Closure of Sterlite plant says something about our collective morality: Death, violence move governments more than reason and evidence It took a brazen exercise of what sociologists since Max Weber refer to as the state’s “monopoly of violence” by Tamil Nadu authorities to bring our attention to a problem that had been affecting the local residents of Tuticorin for over two decades. Since this tragic incident, it took hardly...

-The Hindu The social activist whose new book on the RTI is just out, worries about the doublespeak in politics today, where rhetoric and substance never match The past couple of months have been hectic for Aruna Roy. The social activist and Magsaysay Award winner has been travelling across the country to promote her book, The RTI Story: Power to the People, which came out in April. After waiting more than a...

-The Indian Express The bullet train project, planned after discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe, is being built with a Rs 88,000-crore soft loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Palghar: As politicians across party lines gathered on stage together in Palghar on Sunday calling for the ambitious Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project to be cancelled, they repeatedly cited the word ‘vikas’, qualifying it with the...