Blame the poor enforcement of the Integrated Pest Management policy for the toxins in your salad Here is a scary story about pesticides from an enterprising farmer. Subramaniam Kannaiyan — from Thalavady village in Erode, Tamil Nadu — blogs about his experiences with pesticides with respect to a single vegetable, cabbage. Small and marginal farmers with less than two hectares of land are cultivating cabbages on about 3,000 acres here. According to...

Work on the project was put on hold a year ago Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh has lifted the stop-work order on the Maheshwar Hydel Power Corp Ltd., implying that he was yielding to pressure from the Prime Minister's office and Madhya Pradesh politicians across political lines. However, while project promoters are now free to construct the remaining five spillway gates of the dam, the lowering of the...

Soon, RTI won’t get info out of the CBI Mirror Turns Opaque     * CBI proposes an exemption from giving information under RTI     * Law ministry gives it green signal based on Gopal Subramanium’s opinion     * All it requires is a department of personnel and training (DoPT) notification to get an exemption     * Activists fear agencies will use this to deny citizens information *** Will the CBI be allowed not to divulge details...

It was the mother of all Nandigrams. If there was one Nandigram on March 14, 2007, then perhaps there were dozens of Nandigrams during the three-day cleanse-Marichjhapi operation in January 1979.    “It was Saraswati Puja. The police were just raining bullets as soon as the refugees landed in our village! Like everybody else on the road, I, too, fled for safety as I could see people falling either injured or...

A new anti-Maoist campaign started in Chhattisgarh last week with the appearance of posters and newspaper advertisements targeted against Maoists and their sympathizers. Neither the posters nor the advertisements have any mention of printer, publisher or sponsor. The posters first surfaced in Narayanpur district last Thursday. They featured photos of Activists Aruna Roy, Swami Agnivesh and Arundhati Roy carrying a statement condemning the killing of MNREGA Activist Niyamat Ansari by Maoists....