The Conflict of Interest Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha is a welcome step to control the grey areas in which “public private partnerships” are conducted. AMONG the many things that have proliferated in the economic boom of the brash new India is conflict of interest. So widespread, comprehensive and many-tentacled has this feature become that it is often no longer even recognised to exist, much less to be a...
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RTI success: Ministry of environment & forests uploads the damning Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel Report-Vinita Deshmukh
On 23rd May, Moneylife wrote on how a Kerala citizen was denied access to Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel Report (WGEEP). The Central Information Commission and the Delhi High Court ordered the ministry to make it public. It has now been uploaded on its site Just when one wondered whether the ministry of environment & forests (MoEF) would turn to the Supreme Court after the Delhi High Court on 17th May,...
More »Country's first zero waste toilet system at Evoor
-The Hindu Costing Rs.37, 000 with DRDA grant of Rs.9, 000 The first ‘zero waste toilet system' (ZWTS) in the country was inaugurated at Evoor village near Musiri on Thursday by Collector Jayashree Muralidharan. This is an integrated urine diversion biogas linked flush toilet system and has five modules-a flush out toilet, a bathroom, a urine diversion bowl, a cultivated wetland for treating bathroom water, and a biogas plant. The Collector said that the...
More »Why drought reigns eternal-Sunita Narain
It is mostly caused by deliberate neglect and designed failure of the way we manage water and land It’s drought time again. Nothing new in this announcement. Each year, first we have crippling droughts between December and June, and then devastating floods in the next few months. It’s a cycle of despair, which is more or less predictable. But this is not an inevitable cycle of nature we must live...
More »MGNREGA 2.0 LAUNCHED: NEW GUIDELINES
The Government of India has formally launched the news Guidelines of the MGNAREGA based on the Mihir Shah Committee report. The news guidelines include many new works under conservation activities and it strengthens the hands of the village panchayats and gram sabhas. However, the list of works does not include the activities under the system of rice intensification (SRI) which encourages scientific method of paddy cultivation with better yield in...
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