On the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, India announced that it would go ahead with the planned nuclear power plant at Jaitapur, Maharashtra. Even the media, which could have kept up the pressure on the government, dismissed the protests by the local people in Jaitapur as one incited by the Shiv Sena and so not worthy of any attention. While I am no Sena supporter, it is difficult...

As the stage is set for the crucial meeting of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP), a global regime to protect human health and the environment from dangerous chemicals, to be held in Geneva from April 25, a showdown between the Centre and Kerala has been underway. In the meeting with an all-party delegation from Kerala, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reiterated the position taken by Union ministers...

When a farmer named Praveen Gawankar and two neighbors began a protest four years ago against a proposed nuclear power plant here in this coastal town, they were against it mainly for not-in-my-backyard reasons. They stood to lose mango orchards, cashew trees and rice fields, as the government forcibly acquired 2,300 acres to build six nuclear reactors — the biggest nuclear power plant ever proposed anywhere. But now, as a nuclear...

Sharad Pawar says many states had asked him not to ban the pesticide Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is rooting for endosulfan just before the fifth Conference of Parties (COP) of the Stockholm Convention meets in Geneva from April 25 to April 30 to decide the fate of the pesticide. There seems to be a pattern in Pawar’s resistance to banning endosulfan. Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha on February...

Questioning the call for ‘change' by the Trinamool Congress, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said on Thursday if this meant the return of the land distributed to the poor farmers by the Left Front government over the past years to the zamindars and jotedars, farmers across the State would never allow it. “The farmers will never let go off the land they have been given, however loud the call for...