-The Third Pole Villagers in India's Greater Noida district could be the latest victims of groundwater contamination with reports of increased cancer cases spurring investigations and concern about the situation elsewhere in the country The perils of groundwater contamination were again in the spotlight recently when media reports about drinking water causing cancer surfaced from five villages in an industrial belt on the outskirts of the Indian capital New Delhi. As medical experts...

-The Indian Express The death of 12 women after tubectomies at a sterilisation camp organised by the Chhattisgarh government in Bilaspur underlines how India's family planning burden rests disproportionately on women's shoulders. This despite the fact that male sterilisation is actually a relatively easier and risk-free procedure. Consider this. In Chhattisgarh in 2011-12, the most recent year for which data is available, 1,27,114 tubectomies were performed against just 6,765 vasectomies - this...

-The Hindu Though studies point to an increase in the pace of glacier wastage in the western Himalayas, long-term monitoring is required to study glacier evolution and its relation to the climate At dawn, Mohd Soheb begins an arduous trek to the high camp at Chhota Shigri glacier in the Pir Panjal range in Spiti valley, Himachal Pradesh. From the PWD guesthouse at Chota Dara, he walks down to the Chandra river...

-The Business Standard   NC Saxena, a former member of the National Advisory Council believes that the regulatory regime in the states continues to be oppressive. In an e-mailed interview with Aditi Phadnis, Saxena says that the fundamental problem in India is the low tax-GDP ratio and neither the last government nor the current one seems interested in increasing revenues. Edited excerpts: * The new government appears to be watering down a lot...

-The Telegraph A swathe of land stretching from the Himalayan foothills to the Indo-Gangetic plains has experienced a steady and significant decrease in water stored in lakes, reservoirs, rivers and as groundwater over the past decade, government scientists have said. Scientists at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting here and their collaborators in other institutions have found that the terrestrial water storage (TWS) - a measure of surface and underground...