Gentle on critical pollution

Over a year ago, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) undertook an exercise to assess pollution levels in some of the highly polluted industrial areas of India. It then released a list of 43 most polluted areas, terming them critically polluted, and imposed a moratorium on their expansion. The aim of the whole effort was to identify areas that required urgent intervention and pollution abatement measures. The exercise proved futile as these areas remain highly polluted and have brought no change in the lives of people living near them.

Chhattisgarh's Industrial Jungle

The rich green fields of Darramuda village in Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh were almost peaceful. A JCB backhoe loader whirred on as it dug in and pulled out lumps of wet brown earth.

Resource war India after 2020

What is the shape our climate-challenged world is in? Rich developed countries have made it clear they are not interested in any talk about their past emissions.

1,620.361 ha of discontent

Brazil rejected posco; why is Orissa so interested South Korean steel giant posco's proposed steel plant hangs in virtual limbo. Popular resistance by the posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti has rendered land acquisition for the Rs 51,000 crore project--hailed as a foreign direct investment coup--quite impossible.

Andhra Pradesh's killer pharma industry

The antibiotics we consume are now being found in effluents discharged by industrial estates in Andhra Pradesh. Shockingly, the quantities are not minuscule. Researchers who collected samples and then analysed them say the amount of antibiotics they detected has never been reported anywhere else in the world. These industrial estates produce the bulk drugs that go into the medicines we take. It is important to note that these antibiotics are supplied the world over.

No concrete plans

The cement industry is India's ultimate sunshine industry. Up until the 1980s, it was not growing phenomenally. Now it is. After cement was decontrolled in 1989, the industry took off -- its growth rate far outstripping that of the country's gross domestic product. In terms of production capacity, it has grown almost two-and-a-half times -- from 61 million tonnes in 1989-90 to 157.5 in 2003-2004.

United Colours of Industry

Colours are inescapably embedded in everyday life. So it's critical to know, and to regulate, the way they operate. Having said that, it's not easy to recognise the problems associated with their use. Adulteration in food colours, or allergic reactions to elements in fabric apart, consumers are unaware of problems caused by agents and vehicles of colour. But a look at the tailpipe in any industrial zone can cure that.Colour problem comes from two types of industries:

On paper

The Top 3 What makes these companies the best #1 ITC Ltd-Bhadrachalam Unit For technology leapfrog -- for eliminating toxic chlorine from the bleaching process; proactively reaching farmers, exhorting them to grow wood. Mind, water use in this plant is still too high; effluent disposal still pollutes the river.

BHOPAL: the bad dream continues

By hook, crook or vision

The 1980s and early 1990s were a time, the world over, of increasingly stereotypical confrontations between industry and environmentalists. Ecological considerations formed no part of industrial productive strategies, argued environmentalists. Industry treated the ecosystem as a vast self-replenishing raw material procurement facility, and as a convenient dumping site. Nonsense, thundered industry captains. They would not be blackmailed by bird-lovers; nothing could compromise profit-margins.