If the environment ministry's draft proposal for 'inviolate forest areas' is accepted, large swathes of healthy forests, including national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, tiger reserves and wildlife corridors, would be out of bounds for all mining activities, and not just coal excavation. The ministry's draft lists criteria for identifying forest patches where mining should be banned following the GoM on coal's decision to junk the no-go policy of the environment ministry. The...

CHENNAI: Government officials in Tamil Nadu can now sit in their air-conditioned offices and keep tabs on clogged up Water bodies and channels in remote villages using satellite technology. Criticized by many for corruption and inefficiency, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been given a scientific make-over in the state with GIS (geographic information system) mapping being used to organize the works as well as to...

The odds of an El Nino phenomenon developing in July through September and potentially affecting the Indian monsoon are dead-even at 50-50, offering hope that India's agriculture and economy may yet escape a crippling blow.  A stuttering economy has seen heightened attention on the Pacific warming, known to disrupt the southwest monsoon, as poor rains this year can be a further brake on growth, jeopardizing bonus farm production recorded in recent...

India is listed among the top five countries across the world which lose a majority of the two million children worldwide who die each year to easily preventable diseases -- pneumonia and diarrhoea – states the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report released on Friday. The report adds that nearly 90 per cent of all these deaths are due to unsafe Water and poor hygiene. “Pneumonia and diarrhoea are among the...

Gosikhurd was sanctioned in 1983 and meant to irrigate 2.5 lakh hectares in Vidarbha As Manikrao Gedam sits outside his three-room house, he wonders how he has benefited by giving up his 10 acres for the Gosikhurd irrigation project at Bhandara in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region. For that matter, he wonders what anyone has gained from it. Today, he has nothing else, but the house in a resettlement colony; his sons are unemployed; and...