Ramaswamy R. Iyer, former Secretary, Union Ministry of Water Resources, has been a consistent critic of the idea of interlinking rivers (ILR). In this interview, he shares his concerns about the Supreme Court's judgment directing the government to implement the project, and explains why it is deeply flawed. Excerpts In your article in “The Hindu”, you have claimed that the government's stand on the project is ambiguous. The amicus curiae has,...

The agitation against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant can be seen as a case of activism gone berserk. The high-octane drama against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) in Tamil Nadu has wound down. The seven-month-long agitation led by the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) at Idinthakarai village in Tirunelveli district, demanding the closure of the ready-to-be commissioned project, ended on March 27 when S.P. Udayakumar, PMANE convener, called off...

'This will send a strong message that State will not compromise on corruption' Even as an hour-long meeting on Saturday between Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav indicated that the phase of Centre-State confrontation might just be over, the Central Minister has urged Mr. Yadav to recommend a CBI probe into the irregularities in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee...

-The Telegraph Former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today blamed Mamata Banerjee’s recent expressions of intolerance towards critics on her “lack of self-confidence”. He described as “paglamo (madness)” the new government’s curbs on co-operative banks’ loan recovery processes, saying it would “destroy” such banking systems. Asked during a TV interview about his successor’s frequent admonitions to the Opposition to keep mum and allow the new government to work, Bhattacharjee said: “It’s not just the...

India, like other Asian countries, has focused its climate change adaptation strategies on rural and urban areas while neglecting the urban fringes, say experts. Peri-urban areas are characterised by haphazard, accelerated expansion and are farthest from basic urban services and infrastructure, according to United Nations-Habitat’s ‘The State of Asian Cities 2010-11’. By 2020, of the projected 4.2 billion urban population of the world, 2.2 billion will be living in Asia, many...