-Agence-France Presse Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has said that the country's public health system had "collapsed" in a blunt assessment of his government's failure to extend a social safety net for the poor. Mr Ramesh, known as a maverick with often outspoken views, stressed that 70 per cent of spending on health was out of people's own pockets, making it the single most important reason for indebtedness in rural areas. "We all...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 3177
Mangroves under threat from shrimp farms, UN study says
-Reuters OSLO: Valuable mangrove Forests that protect coastlines, sustain sealife and help slow climate change are being wrecked by the spread of shrimp and fish farms, a UN-backed study showed on Wednesday. About a fifth of mangroves worldwide have been lost since 1980, mostly because of clearance to make way for the farms which often get choked with waste, antibiotics and fertilizers, according to the study. Intact mangroves were almost always more valuable...
More »House panel highlights Forest law conflicts -Nitin Sethi
-The Times of India How can a right given under one Act be a criminal offence under another, members of a Parliamentary standing committee have asked officials from the Union environment ministry, raising concern about conflict between the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, and the Indian Forest Act (IFA), 1927. The House panel on science and technology and environment and Forests headed by T Subbarami Reddy of Congress was gathering evidence on...
More »Combating a killer-Dr. PK Rajagopalan
-Frontline There are no effective vaccines against Japanese encephalitis, but its spread can be controlled in India through vector management. JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS, or JE, has become endemic in many parts of the country, occurring repeatedly in epidemic form in many of them—for instance, in parts of Gorakhpur in northern Uttar Pradesh. One can expect JE-type epidemics year after year in States where prolonged drought-like conditions are followed by heavy monsoons. This leads to...
More »Forest clearances under national green tribunal ambit -Nitin Sethi
-The Times of India The environment ministry has failed in its attempt to keep Forest clearances outside the purview of the national green tribunal (NGT) though it might have succeeded in delaying the process. The environment ministry had contended that clearances granted under the Forest Rights Act, 1980 could not be questioned by the tribunal, which was created, ironically, by the environment ministry to provide fast remedy to those aggrieved by infringement...
More »
