-The Telegraph The economic survey has challenged an international assessment that has ranked India 125, or near-bottom, among 132 countries on environmental performance, but has acknowledged that air pollution has increased to alarming levels. The survey, released by the Union government today, has questioned the methodology of the Environmental Performance Index 2012 that has assigned air quality in India a rank of 132, the worst in the world, and similarly low ranks...

This is called moron management. Instead of debating nuclear safety, India’s Prime Minister is trotting out conspiracies AS SPIN doctors go, the UPA and its media advisers have proved to be pretty good. But as the elected government of the world’s largest democracy, their attitude towards public debate on issues of importance such as nuclear or GMO safety comes across as churlish, vengeful and authoritarian. People who believe that the anti-nuclear struggle...

-EPW   The system of environmental clearances for developmental and industrial projects needs to be reworked. India seems to have perfected the art of creating laws and rules that are destined to fail. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of environmental regulations. You have pollution control boards that can do nothing to control pollution. And you have a system of environmental ­impact assessment (EIA) before a developmental or industrial project...

The National Green Tribunal is the latest to point out that consultants are including “cooked data” in the key Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) reports which determine green clearances for industrial projects. The Tribunal has told the government to come up with a mechanism to ensure authentic data. The Tribunal made its comments last week while suspending the environment clearance given to Scania Steel and Power for the expansion of its sponge...

Iqbal Masud, the civil servant and critic, supported the ban on The Satanic Verses in 1989. His reason was simple: if the book remained on sale in India, Muslims would march in protest, policemen would fire upon them, some of them would die, and no book, said Masud, was worth the life of a single protester. There were, he allowed, legitimate arguments to be made about incitement, about mobs marching against...