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Waste has become a global problem, and is demanding curative technologies that require almost preternatural efficiency to execute. And that keep collapsing nevertheless.

News

Hell and high water

The incendiary Sardar Sarovar Dam project came to a head on March 15 this year, when Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) agitators, led by the redoubtable Medha Patkar, demonstrated in front of the ministry of environment and forests, asking the government to open the construction sluices that had been slyly closed three weeks ago.
In the shadow of the dam, the two Congress state governments of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are wrestling out the issue of whether the dam's height ought to be reduced or not. The capricious realpolitiks of the issue often tends to smother the real one -- that, in the final analysis, the dam's worth lies in what it can do to, and for, the people and the environment, not in which chief minister's job it can help keep.

The closing of the gates

A controversy boiled over when the construction sluices were closed abruptly and affected scores of people

One goal, two roads

Non-governmental organisations are taking the government's proposal for cooperation in poverty alleviation with a healthy pinch of salt

Master plan ahoy

DDT milk

Hazardous care

Meeting to care

Exploring softer options

Let the polluter pay

Bird lovers in the dock

Prize catch

Caught in the crossfire

Leathal laxity

The sustainable threshold

Interview

We can't regard forests as something without human presence

RUBENS RICUPERO, 57, Brazil's suave and diplomatic minister for environment, has an unenviable job: charting the destiny of the beleaguered Amazonian rainforests, the source of...

Science & Technology

The enigma of inertia

Physicists offer a radical theory to facilitate understanding of the phenomenon of inertia

Tongue-twisting in easy steps

A software package allows material in unfamiliar Indian languages to be read in 10 others

Pudgy babies have the edge

Recent studies indicate that the greater the weight of babies at birth, the less prone they are to heart disease during their riotous adult years

All the hair in place, just in time

Examining hair fibres could help determine when South Americans graduated from hunting vicunas to herding llamas

Learning from lasagne

Porous layers of slurry, zapped with electricity, may revolutionise the treatment of contaminated clay soils

Curtain falls over aurora borealis

The aurora borealis is caused not by solar flares but by gigantic portions of the corona flowing out of the Sun

Dashes of fire

Sniffing out cancer

Methane halt

Maternal aerobics

Reprieve for yew

Pummelled into life

Analysis

Rulers of the waves

A stitch in time

Forget dugout canoes and catamarans -- take a ride on a sewn boat

Riding the waves with an eye on a star

Traditional sailors are skilled in roaming the seas with nature as their guide

The original boat people

Maritime communities were discriminated against, but their technology is by no means inferior

Wanted: an Indian maritime museum

Although India has a maritime history that dates back to the Harappan period, the conservation of its marine heritage has languished

The Wasted Earth

Waste has become a global problem, and is demanding curative technologies that require almost preternatural efficiency to execute. And that keep collapsing nevertheless.

Deep waters

The Indian Ocean's boat-building and navigational techniques, though largely ignored, have survived over thousands of years

The rise and fall of the green dot

The mercurial success -- and equally rapid collapse -- of Germany's package recycling system is forcing a rethink on waste management policy

Imminent deluge

Asian countries risk becoming the dumping ground for the world's burgeoning waste trade

Tiffs with scrap

Beware of waste that can be recycled

Special Report

Bills of contention

Two legislations on plant genetic resources have been proposed. But who benefits?

For breeders alone

Breeder's have a monopoly in seed transactions under the proposed plant variety legislation

A matter of interpretation

Will the Plant Varieties Bill and the proposed Biodiversity Bill really help the farmers and the poor?

Looking the other way

Under GATT it is illegal for farmers to sell seeds, but this can be ignored if the transactions are small, says the GATT chief

The Fortnight

In the red with green measures

European companies fear that the plethora of environmental protection laws may blunt their competitive edge

Countdown to safety

In the face of mounting criticism at home and abroad, Japan's fast-breeder reactor programme is on the mat

No milking the super-cows

The European Community has opposed injecting cows with the controversial hormone bovine somatrophin to boost milk production

Money makers

A bird in the bush is best left there

Domesticating wild birds reduces their lifespan

In South Asia

Impure lakes

Thorp gets the nod

Threatened farmers

Ban on bones

Profitable profiles

Green anniversary

Leader

Rights for the poor's knowledge

THE government's efforts to develop legislation to control access to the country's wild as well as cultivated biodiversity are indeed laudable: the ministry of agriculture has already prepared a bill to control the use of cultivated biodiversity and the ministry of environment and forests is working on a bill that will deal with wild biodiversity. Together, the two will form a powerful set of laws. They will have to be harmonised to ensure consistency in the management of biodiversity within the country.

The logic of importing lowly dung

THE largely deprecatory reports in the Indian media about the proposed import of Dutch dung have missed a key point. The idea seems to sound so outlandish because dung is a lowly thing in the perception of the modern Indian middle class. But if India can import chemical fertilisers, which adversely affect the soil, why can't it import something that is good for its soil? In fact, if Indian's foreign trade priorities were correct, dung imports would get higher priority than video cassette recorders or components for Maruti cars -- standard items of import.

When the pot calls the kettle black

THE Brazilian minister for environment, Rubens Ricupero, says that Western politicians, NGOs and the media betray the attitude that Third World countries look for what he calls the "lowest common denominator" in international negotiations. These dirty and inefficient cousins apparently force the rest of the world community to settle for the lowest standards and targets. This is an extremely unjust attitude. In fact, it is the West that has on several occasions insisted on watering down environmental norms.

Crosscurrent

The nature of human health

It's high time that we invested wisely in a robust environment, a prerequisite for public health

A city derailed

The Calcutta tramcar system, perhaps the only eco-friendly feature in the city's ruined landscape, is heading towards extinction

Up in smoke

Illegal marijuana cultivation leads to a systematic butchering of the rich rainforests of Kerala

It's a cow's life

Cattle in western Rajasthan struggle for survival as pastures continue to shrink

Review

A pact with evil truth

SCIENCE is a double-edged sword, as curative as a missionary and incomprehensibly barbaric in more or less equal measure. After decades of rampant scientism, there is now a perception that it is deeply and irretrievably dehumanising, a Faustian pact with the devil.

Tanking up on history

NOTED environmental activist and writer Anupam Mishra's recent book on tanks is a significant contribution to environmental studies for at least three reasons: first, it establishes the historical and continuing role for, and the current relevance of, traditional water conservation, irrigation, and drinking water systems, even faced with the state's studied negligence; second, it explores the socio-political context in which collective knowledge allows

Medicare perverted

"THE limitations of present health activities are only a reflection of the modern system of medicine (which) has not yet developed a way of dealing with health problems at the social level," says the book. This yawning gap between academic and ground reality is what it aims to plug. Using relevant data, including government reports and research studies, each of its four sections fleshes out its thesis from different but interrelated directions.

Working magic

IN HER short but bitingly relevant play, Mridula Garg places the exploitation of children in the carpet industry in an equally horrific context of deforestation, outmigration and rural poverty -- ground realities in India justified as modern, "Western" development. Jadoo ka Kaleen, the "magic carpet", is an emancipatory metaphor: the desire of the little ones to fly from bondage.

Understanding Adivasis

INDIAN filmmakers have tackled the subject of Adivasis before, but the film under review this fortnight is the most ambitious in recent years. Tapan K Bose's Jharkhand was meant to be part of a trilogy, but the other two didn't get made because the filmmaker ran out of resources.

Grassroots

Too little of a good thing

The increasing demand for organic food is causing shortages and adulteration

Chemical-free abundance

After years of killing his fields with pesticides and fertilisers, a sapota grower rediscovered cultivation without chemicals

Family plot

Timely practices of mulching, watering and pruning have allowed the Kachares to thrive on "barren" ground

The grapes of growth

After setting the trend of grape cultivation in Sangli district, Ganapathyrao Mhetre is all set to introduce organic farming techniques

Contacts with young minds

Schoolchildren in Uttar Pradesh delighted themselves collecting leaves and plants for a unique biodiversity competition

Letters

The goddess and the grain bank

The Academy of Development Science's efforts in starting a grain bank in the Karjat Tribal Block (February 15, 1994) are indeed laudable and should be systematically replicated.

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