Investing around $1.3 trillion – or two per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) – into ten key sectors can kick-start a transition towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient 'green economy' that can also help reduce poverty, says a new United Nations report launched today. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) presented the report, “Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication,” to environment ministers from over 100 countries at...

ENVIRONMENT MINISTER DISREGARDS FINDINGS OF HIS OWN REVIEW AND STATUTORY CLEARANCES COMMITTEES The following is the statement issued to the press by Abhay Sahoo, President of the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), and Prashant Paikeay, the PPSS spokesperson, on January 31, 2010. The decision of Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh to give a comprehensive okay to the POSCO India Steel Power Production-Captive Port project, based on some additional conditions, is nothing short of...

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan wants it to be the new Singapore. State officials call it Urjanchal, land of energy. For sociologist Sakarama Somayaji, the enduring image from India’s emerging energy wonderland in Singrauli is the women who sell baskets of stones on the roadside. Individually or in groups, the women break stones, and sell them to passing trucks for R80-R90 a basket, a day’s labour. The women are...

“Can you say access to education is an unreasonable restriction imposed by State?” Providing free and compulsory education is intended to allow all children in the age group 6-14 live with dignity, which is a facet of “right to life' under Article 21 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court said on Thursday. A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar was hearing arguments on petitions...

The Supreme Court today spoke up for a 25 per cent school quota for the underprivileged, asking private schools who have challenged the Right to Education Act on this ground to explain how they were claiming a right to fill all their seats as they pleased. A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, asked the schools to explain under what law they were claiming the right to decide their...