To many, ecology clearances coming in quick succession first for the 12-million-tonne steel project, including a captive power complex and a minor port that the South Korean Posco is diligently pursuing for close to six years and then for SAIL’s three mining leases at Chiria in Jharkhand appear as history bending revolutions. This is because the ministry of environment and forests, led by environment zealot Jairam Ramesh was till the...

Then Clive Lloyd took over the West Indies cricket team, he knew he was no Garfield Sobers. Lloyd focused on infusing discipline and strategy sessions with the team. "Both exceptional leaders, Sobers led by example, while Lloyd built a team. I suspect Jairam Ramesh is more like Sobers," an environment analyst sums up his assessment of the minister. The Sobers analogy crops up, in explicit and implicit ways, in any...

Though wages are not significantly high, West Asia continues to attract the poor looking for a break… In Benyamin's award-winning Malayalam novel   Aadu Jeevitham (A Sheep-like Life), based on a true life story, the protagonist, Najeeb, is held as a slave labourer on a sheep farm in a faraway desert in Saudi Arabia. For three years, he is forced to do back-breaking work, is kept half-hungry and is denied water to...

ENVIRONMENT MINISTER DISREGARDS FINDINGS OF HIS OWN REVIEW AND STATUTORY CLEARANCES COMMITTEES The following is the statement issued to the press by Abhay Sahoo, President of the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), and Prashant Paikeay, the PPSS spokesperson, on January 31, 2010. The decision of Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh to give a comprehensive okay to the POSCO India Steel Power Production-Captive Port project, based on some additional conditions, is nothing short of...

Agitating farmers abducted two senior government officials - one from the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority - from a village here on Friday. The officials could not be traced till late Friday night.Deputy chief executive officer RK Singh and deputy collector SP Singh had gone to attend a meeting with the farmers, who had been agitating for higher compensation for their land acquired by the state government for development work,...