Complexity and unsolved problems are at the very heart of the sustainability challenge, and at the very heart of M.S. Swaminathan's thinking and essays. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus offered the piercing insight that geometric population growth would inevitably outstrip food production, leaving society destitute and hungry. Since that time, our optimism of beating the “Malthusian curse” has waxed and waned. Few people in modern history have done more to help...

AS CONCERN for the ecosystem runs high all across the world, a small, mountainous state in India’s northeast — Sikkim, has taken a step ahead and declared to go completely organic by the year 2015. What this means is the total phasing out of chemical inputs from agriculture. Sikkim has long been an ecologically conscious state with initiatives such as a comprehensive ban on plastic, bio-medical and chemical waste in...

Following a hike in the prices of petrol, diesel, gas, milk prices have also gone up. Between January 2007 and March 2010 the price of milk rose seven times in Delhi. The story is similar elsewhere in the nation too. In the last one year, prices increased from Rs 17 to Rs 22 a litre. In some cities, like Mumbai, the rise has been steeper. Earlier, it was pulses that were burning...

The recent spike in world food prices has further widened the gap between the developed and the developing economies. While, over 70 per cent of the world's population resides in poor countries, it has access to less than 40 per cent of the world's resources such as water, irrigated land, power, etc. This is a result of inconsistent economic progress (post-colonialisation birth pangs), rampant population growth and distractions such as...

Detailed project report for the yard will be ready soon    Even as Tirupur grew exponentially to carve out a niche for itself in the world textile map, the city is yet to have some of the basic infrastructure needed to keep the area clean and hygienic. One of them is ‘modern compost yard', a project that was conceptualised many years ago but did not take off owing to bureaucratic red-tapism. No-objection...