Buoyed by the imminent scrapping of Reliance Industries-promoted Mumbai special economic zone, aggrieved farmers and activists are now gunning for seven other proposed SEZs in Maharashtra. Anti-SEZ groups will soon agitate to demand denotification of the fertile land earmarked for projects in the Konkan, western Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha. The activists got a shot in the arm on Friday when their four-year struggle forced the government to denotify 16,900 acres of land...

New CRZ notification sparks off fears, upsets fisherfolk The new Coastal Zone Regulation (CRZ) 2011 which has opened up construction along the sea has sparked off fears of Mumbai being ringed with high rises and mutating into a ‘desi' Manhattan. It has triggered furious debates on development and upset the fisherfolk who are planning to hit the streets across the country to agitate for better coastal protection. Since 1991 when the first...

Further political unrest in Andhra Pradesh may lead to jobs and investment being moved out of the state, industry bodies have warned amid the Telangana tension. “The politicians should realise that companies have the option to move jobs elsewhere,” Som Mittal, president of software industry body Nasscom, said at the weekend. He cited how jobs were moved out of Visakhapatnam to Chennai and Pune because of the counter-Telangana protests in 2009. “We have...

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...

Every time Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh says no to a project, his critics give him a new label: Green fundamentalist, anti-business, anti-growth, obstructionist, Luddite and Dr. No. The job has rarely attracted so much attention, but Ramesh has turned a sleepy and apathetic ministry into a controversial one in recent months. His pronouncements have stopped projects worth billions of dollars, creating powerful enemies in industry and business. His political colleagues have...