In the backdrop of climate change and other environmental challenges, Kerala announced a Rs 1000-crore 'Green Fund' for the next five years while earmarking an initial provision of Rs 100 crore in the budget for 2010-11. State Finance Minister T M Thomas Isaac, who presented the budget in the state assembly, said the fund would be utilized to take up projects to preserve natural assets like forests and promote green...

What sets poverty in India apart is the effort that has gone into defining, measuring, recalibrating, contesting, recounting, refining and disputing its magnitude, nature and, at least, in the case of one protagonist, existence. This exegesis on poverty has been captured in a World Bank volume, The Great Indian Poverty Debate, published before the latest estimates by Prof Suresh Tendulkar kicked off yet another round of heated discussion on the...

The national biofuel policy announced by the government last week is well-intentioned but is not really practical. It aims for achieving a 20 per cent blending of biofuels with petrol as well as diesel by 2017. Given that even the 5 per cent ethanol doping target — raised to 10 per cent last October — is yet to be achieved makes the target quite unachievable. The sugar industry, which is...

The following piece was written for the UNIDO’s General Conference that took place in Vienna this month but could not be carried by any of the international papers because of a slight delay, although some feel its contents may not be ideologically palatable to them. Hence it is being carried here for the benefit of our readers. —Editor A highly positive sum game awaits the community of nations if an internationally...

Governments and people have to make choices about accepting new scientific developments into their daily lives. Many attribute high levels of objectivity and integrity to scientists, which is not true of many of them. Scientists have been known to manipulate results to their advantage. Scientific issues are often complex, there are differing views among scientists and the layman finds it difficult to decide which scientific course is harmful or beneficial....