A Group of Ministers (GoM) will discuss on Thursday issues pertaining to illegal mining, a ban on iron ore exports, the new mining legislation and setting aside a share in the profits of mining companies for the development of tribal areas. Officials of the Ministry of Mines said Minister B.K. Handique was pushing for the Ministry's proposal to make mining companies in tribal areas shell out a part of their equity,...

Build-up of different types of resistance could make it more difficult to manage the plants using herbicides. Transgenes present in 80 per cent of wild canola found by study Authorities had anticipated the existence of GM “volunteers” Researchers in the U.S. have found new evidence that genetically modified crop plants can survive and thrive in the wild, possibly for decades. A University of Arkansas team surveyed countryside in North Dakota for canola. Transgenes were...

Complexity and unsolved problems are at the very heart of the sustainability challenge, and at the very heart of M.S. Swaminathan's thinking and essays. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus offered the piercing insight that geometric population growth would inevitably outstrip food production, leaving society destitute and hungry. Since that time, our optimism of beating the “Malthusian curse” has waxed and waned. Few people in modern history have done more to help...

South Korean steelmaker Posco’s wait just got longer with the Union Environment ministry directing Orissa government to stop all work at the project site, including land acquisition. The decision was taken after the N C Saxena-Devendra Pandey committee, appointed by the Centre, reported violations of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) at the Posco site. For its part, the state government has said that it will take “corrective and accurate steps”...

The implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act in Madhya Pradesh faces a host of problems due to a strange interpretation of the Act by the Forest Department. While the department's opposition to the Act is no secret — several petitions have been filed against it in the Supreme Court by retired forest officials or organisations run by them — new information obtained...