An international private-social group foresees India’s water demand exceeding availability by a factor of two by 2030. Time is now for India to take on the daunting task of formulating a unifying national water policy.  The 2030 Water Resources Group is a consortium of private-social sector organisations formed in 2008 to provide insights into emerging world-wide water issues. In a report, “Charting our water future” issued in 2009, the group...

Senior biotechnology scientists have questioned the rationale for public consultations on genetically modified (GM) brinjal called by the environment ministry to decide the fate of what could be India’s first biotech food crop. “I think this (public consultation) is absolutely unwarranted,” said Shantu Shantaram, a scientist who was among the world’s first regulators of biotech crops in the US during the 1990s and who says he strongly favours the introduction...

UN climate panel chairman Rajendra Pachauri today said the panel’s erroneous forecast that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 had not hurt its credibility and that he had no intention of resigning. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had earlier this week conceded that its fourth assessment report had without substantiation predicted that most of the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 because of climate change. “It was...

The government needs to allocate more funds for public health. The mismatch between the declared objective of universal healthcare through the public health system and the actual level of expenditure remains serious.  One of the three most important planks on which Barak Obama won the U.S. presidential election was the country’s healthcare system, which he promised to fix. Indeed, the most important legislative measure initiated by Mr. Obama so far...

Many of the plastic toys sold in India may contain chemicals harmful to children, an environmental group says in a report. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) studied a sample of Indian toys and found that all of them contained high levels of phthalates. Phthalates are chemicals used to soften plastic and the group says India has no regulations to control their use. The use of these chemicals in...