The water used to cool the Rawatbhata reactor was pumped back into Chambal river. Before and during my pregnancy, I drank the tap water supplied to us from the same river. I didn't go even so far as to boil this water. Nothing went wrong. Kudankulam has been in the news and how! Little did I imagine in 2002 that this remote area of southern Tamil Nadu where there are more...

Rights activists and unions have dubbed “racist” and “class-specific” a Tamil Nadu police exercise of enumerating workers, college students and tenants from other states based on their ethnicity and language. The drive comes after five alleged bank robbers were shot dead in Chennai last month. Documents found with them suggested they were from Bihar and Bengal. Some of the activists are planning to challenge the count in court saying it goes against...

-Economic and Political Weekly Strict implementation of NHRC guidelines for investigation into fake “encounters” is a must. The killing of five suspected bank robbers in Chennai on 23 February by police officers tasked with apprehending them looks suspiciously like yet another case of a fake “encounter”. News reports following the killing have brought out various inconsistencies in the claim of the police that they fired in self-defence.   After directives from the National Human...

The disaster in Japan revealed many risks that were earlier unknown; it is important to assess the risks in India in a transparent manner and explain which are worth taking. The nuclear plant accident at Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011 exemplifies the prescient remark of nuclear reactor pioneer, the late Alvin Weinberg, that “a nuclear accident somewhere is a nuclear accident everywhere.” After Fukushima, many countries initiated a reconsideration of the...

-The Hindu Business Line    The President of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Mr B. Muthuraman, on Thursday said that the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011, would cause a five-fold increase in land prices to the industry. “No industry will be able to afford that,” he said in an interaction with journalists, on the sidelines of a conference on the theme “Tamil Nadu: Vision 2025”. The Bill is expected to be presented...