A growing number of endangered olive ridley sea turtles have been getting killed in Eastern India’s coastal state Orissa by mechanized vessels defying a fishing ban on one of the world’s largest turtle sanctuaries, Gahirmatha. While the government said "no more than 800" were killed since November last year, environmentalists counter that the casualty count of these tiny turtles is actually 5,000. The problem illustrates the situation that confronts Orissa and other...

Cash transfers, the latest global development fashion, involve several risks in India, not least the risk of forgetting the need for continuing structural change. WHEN I was growing up, several decades ago, middle-class society in India was always a little delayed in catching on to Western fashions whether in music or dress or in other aspects. The past decades of globalisation seemed to have changed all that. Modern communications technology...

An estimated 75 per cent of the world’s coral reefs are threatened by local human activity, including over-fishing, coastal development and pollution, and global pressures such as climate change, warming seas and rising ocean acidification, according to a United Nations-backed report unveiled today. “Reefs at Risk Revisited,” launched today in Washington and London, says that if the threats to the reefs are not dealt with, more than 90 per cent of...

Activist Simpreet Singh received the national RTI council award instituted by Arvind Kejriwal's Public Cause Research Foundation on behalf of the National Alliance for Peoples Movement (NAPM) which uses the RTI Act to expose fraud and misappropriation of public assets. NAPM used the RTI Act to investigate Adarsh, the tower meant for Kargil war widows, but usurped by state bureaucrats, politicians and defence personnel who had no role to play...

Demand stronger policies and end to disinvestment of public sector A “Workers' March to Parliament” in the Capital on Wednesday saw a heavy turnout of workers of various central trade unions protesting against price rise, unemployment, labour law violations and disinvestment. The participating organisations included the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, the Indian National Trade Union Congress, the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), the Hind Mazdoor Sabha, the All-India United Trade...