A global scramble for land and mineral resources fuelled by billions of investment dollars is threatening the last remaining wilderness and critical ecosystems, destroying communities and contaminating huge volumes of fresh water, warned Environmental groups in London Wednesday. No national park, delicate ecosystem or community is off limits in the voracious hunt for valuable metals, minerals and fossil fuels, said the Gaia Foundation’s report, "Opening Pandora's Box". The intensity of the...

-The Times of India   The citizen empowering tool of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, is finding it tough to make an entry into the text books of the state high school syllabus. The AP State Council for Education Research and Training (APSCERT) had accepted the state information commission's proposal to introduce RTI in Class VIII text books in 2010. It was then decided that the lesson on RTI would be...

The new draft National Water Policy (NWP) circulated by the Ministry of Water Resources to water experts suggests that the government is poised to withdraw from its responsibilities of water service delivery, and that multinational corporations and financial institutions might have too big a say in water allocation and policy. At first glance, it appears as if the policy takes a holistic approach to water resources management, with a clear recognition...

India seems to have arrived at the threshold of polio eradication, but should it lower its guard? ON January 13, India achieved what had only two years ago seemed impossible in the immediate term. The country, which, given the epidemiological data in the new millennium, had come to be regarded by health experts around the world as one that would be the last to achieve freedom from polio (poliomyelitis), recorded no...

Facing criticism over project delays, the government has decided to get cracking and set up a dedicated forum to remove bottlenecks such as coal linkages and environmental and defence clearances that hold up projects.  Top government officials told TOI that following the meeting of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade & Industry last month, the department of industrial policy and promotion has been asked to identify projects and remove bottlenecks in...