-The Business Standard E-Waste disposal cannot ignore the informal sector The deadline for the enforcement of new electronic Waste (e-Waste) management norms is just a month or so away. And yet, most of the sector’s stakeholders seem quite unprepared. The E-Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011, notified almost a year ago as coming into effect from May 1 this year, require producers of electronic and white goods to take back their products...

-PTI The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) has fined 59 industrial units for unlawfully storing and disposing large quantities of hazardous Waste on their premises. The industries have been asked by MPCB to pay the fine (amount not specified) and have been directed to send the hazardous Waste to common treatment facilities, the 2011-12 Economic Survey of the state, which was tabled in the ongoing Budget session of the legislature, said. The facilities...

One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...

The UPA-II has used the Budget to again play politics with hunger. But it has paid no heed to the ticking time bomb of growing social tensions as 58 million Indians living off agriculture slide deeper into poverty. The Economic Survey says more than half the population is dependent on a sector whose share in the economy is shrinking. The urban-rural income divide is therefore steadily widening, a tinder box that...

In this year's budget, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has essentially tried to consolidate the gains from the initiatives he had launched during the previous two budgets. Thus, in agriculture there is no new initiative except increasing the target for agricultural credit to Rs.5,75,000 crore during 2012-13. This represents an increase of over Rs.1,00,000 crore from last year. The interest rate of four per cent recommended by the National Commission...