The government must stop dilly-dallying over the project and apply the law regardless of the fact that it is India's single largest foreign investment proposal. TWO giant metallurgical projects, both in Orissa. Both promoted by big multinational corporations with tremendous influence. Both opposed by environmental and tribal rights activists because they would displace vulnerable people and destroy fragile ecosystems. Both backed strongly by State-level and national lobbies that claim they...

The 10,000 MW nuclear power plant that the NPCIL proposes to set up at Jaitapur, Maharashtra, with reactors from French company Areva, was on the agenda of the Union Environment Ministry's Expert Appraisal Committee meeting on Monday. According to some members, the committee plans to recommend a conditional environmental clearance for the plant. However, it is not clear what the final decision of the committee will be. It is then up...

Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan will convene a conference of officials on November 18 to review relief measures undertaken by the government for victims of Endosulfan in Kasaragod district. The conference will review the effectiveness of assistance provided by government to the victims. Besides welfare pensions for the disabled, the government is providing monthly assistance for bystanders of bed-ridden victims, rice at Rs.2 a kg and medical assistance. The meet may also look...

An inter-state tussle triggered by a national issue has brought to light how amnesia has afflicted the Orissa government. Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik had demanded three days ago that a public hearing should be held in villages that will be affected by the proposed Polavaram hydel project in neighbouring Andhra. Documents available with The Telegraph suggest that the same Naveen government had a year ago rejected a request by Andhra to...

The ‘Aichi Target' adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at its Nagoya conference could not have come at a more appropriate time. The journal Science recently published a study by Michael Hoffmann and his colleagues titled “The Impact of Conservation on the Status of the World's Vertebrates.” This presents depressing data on threatened species. The scientists conclude that four important factors — agricultural expansion, logging, over-exploitation, and invasive...