-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has recently ordered closure of many polluting units in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere, but such a 'drastic' step could soon be the last resort if the government finally legislates a proposed law which imposes heavy fines on violators instead of shutting them down altogether. The proposed law provides for an increase in the existing penalty from Rs 1 lakh to...

-The Hindu Fifty years since the Green Revolution, the architect of the reform highlights the crisis facing Indian agriculture today It is 11 years since agronomist M.S. Swaminathan handed over his recommendations for improving the state of agriculture in India to the former United Progressive Alliance government, at the height of the Vidarbha farmer suicides crisis, but they are still to be implemented. To address the agrarian crisis and farmers’ unrest across...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Heat trapped by tarred roads and dense clusters of buildings may have added nearly 2 degrees to temperatures in the world's most populated cities, including Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai, over and above the effects of global warming, researchers said today. Their study, described as the first to quantify the combined impacts of global warming and the "urban heat island effect", suggests that the overheated cities will face double...

-The Indian Express An expert panel set up by the green tribunal has said it would take 10 years and Rs 42 crore to revive the Yamuna floodplains, after the damage caused by the World Culture Festival. It was a mela Parvati never saw. The curtains had come up wherever she looked, even around the strip of land where her cows usually graze. “Bandhook leke seedhe khade hue the,” she said about...

-NDTV New Delhi: It will take 10 years to reverse the damage done to the banks of the River Yamuna by a huge cultural festival organised by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the country's top environmental court was told today. A team of experts who have visited the area where the three-day event was held last year have said restoring the flood plain will also cost about 42 crores and take extensive...