Putting water on the Concurrent List is not necessarily an act of centralisation, though it could lead to such a development. That danger is real and needs to be avoided. The Union Ministry of Water Resources has for long been arguing for a shift of water to the Concurrent List without any serious expectation of its happening, but has now begun to pursue the idea more actively. The Ashok Chawla committee,...

A Tamil economist, the late S. Guhan, used to say that Delhi was a capital in search of a country. I was reminded of that remark during the fortnight of May 29 to June 11, 2011. In that fortnight, if one watched the ‘national’ channels or read the ‘national’ newspapers, one would think all of India was involved in one way or the other with the ideas and practices of...

Three days after the union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) issued a notice to the state government asking it to take action against the Lavasa Corporation for violating environmental norms, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday said his government was thinking a way out for the project. The CM, however, clarified that there would be no immediate action against the project. “This is an important project and action against the...

-The Economic Times The state government has decided to file a case against Lavasa Corporation in Pune for violation of environmental norms at Lavasa hill resort, Maharashtra Environment Minister Sanjay Devtale has said. The case is expected to be filed in one or two days. ET has learned that the state government will also withdraw the 'special executive status' to the company. This status allows Lavasa to undertake any construction without...

A World Health Organisation agency evaluates electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones for carcinogenicity. THERE has been a dramatic increase in the use of the mobile phone worldwide since its introduction in the mid-1980s. According to the estimate of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), currently there are about five billion mobile phone subscribers globally. In the past decade or so, there has been growing concern about the possibility of adverse health effects,...