-The Hindu Researchers at IIT-Madras have developed a hybrid solar-powered desalination plant that can serve areas suffering from severe drinking water shortage but have sea or brackish ground water. A solar photovoltaic panel is dovetailed to a power grid or a backup diesel generator that will power up during periods of weak sunshine and at night and keep producing water through a reverse osmosis plant. When the sun shines, the RO...

-Tehelka The new biotechnology Bill will allow biotech firms to tamper with our food In March, US President Barack Obama signed the HR 933 continuing resolution - popularly known as the Monsanto Protection Act - that effectively divests the federal courts of their constitutional power to stop the planting or sale of genetically modified (GM) seeds and crops regardless of the health and environmental consequences. In other words, whether you like...

-The Hindu   As a sun-swept country, India should have been a pioneer in the use of solar power with a photovoltaic panel on every roof. Good policy can help make up for lost time. Solar is the most secure of all energy sources, since it is abundantly available in India. With crippling electricity shortages, the price of electricity traded internally touched Rs. 7 a unit for base loads and Rs. 8.50 during...

-IPS News India's planners worry about ‘jobless growth', but perhaps nothing illustrates this phenomenon better than a policy of handing over the collection and disposal of the capital's refuse to large private corporations, leaving close to 50,000 ragpickers unemployed. For decades ragpickers provided a service to this city, scavenging waste for recyclable plastic, aluminium, glass and other materials, and earning a livelihood by selling their pickings to contractors with equipment to process...

-Frontline   But in Modi's Gujarat the difference between development and darkness is all too visible to those who care to see. NARENDRA MODI may have won three consecutive elections and ruled Gujarat for more than a decade after he was posted there almost as a night watchman, to borrow a cricketing expression. He may have mobilised a massive fan following that is shouting to catapult him into the Prime Minister's post,...