There will soon be a new set of glass doors at Krishi Bhavan. The newly elevated Cabinet Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh plans to bring the doors — a signature element of his interior décor right from his early days at the Commerce Ministry — to his new office. Over the last two tumultuous years at the Environment Ministry, those doors have symbolised the transparency and accessibility he claims...

NEW DELHI: Sealing the fate of Vedanta's bauxite mining project in Niyamgiri hills of Orissa, Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh cancelled the environmental clearance as well on Monday. He had rejected the forest clearance in an order in August 2010. Ramesh's decision came after TOI had reported that his ministry's project review arm, the Environment Appraisal Committee, had again recommended the project despite the minister's order stating that the environmental clearance...

-The Times of India   The Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has said it alone can take the final call on whether Vedanta can mine bauxite deposits in the Niyamgiri hills, asserting that it has the power to turn down the recommendation of the ministry's statutory Environment Appraisal Committee (EAC). Reacting to the report in TOI on Saturday about the EAC's go-ahead to Vedanta to start mining the bauxite deposit...

There’s no outrage when law, policy are outsourced to corporates IN order to get our perspective on issues of national importance right, we could do well to turn our ears from the din created by vested interests. The unduly vehement questioning of the process of concerned citizens (or “civil society”) engaging in legislative and policy consultations is exactly the sort of noise we must not allow to deflect our attention...

The Orissa government suspends the land acquisition for the Posco project in the face of stiff opposition from the people. SIX years ago, when the South Korean steel giant Posco arrived in Orissa with the biggest ever foreign direct investment that had come the country's way, it was expected to help rid the economically backward State of its ‘poor' tag and bring prosperity. Posco had won the $12 billion deal at...