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Sep 15-30, 1999
Cover Story
They prefer to be called the 'forest castes'. They are the 2,000,000-odd villagers living in some 10,000 villages across Orissa. After Independence, timber smugglers and an apathetic government robbed them of the forests they had lived in for decades. Left to fend for themselves, the villagers survived by regenerating the forests and protecting them even from the government on whose lands they stand. Today, 400,000 hectares of forest land is protected and managed by the village communities. Now what they want is sole rights over the forest land and they have formed a state-level forum to fight for ownership. With the Assembly elections only a few months away, and electoral equations weighing heavily in favour of the villagers, can the government turn a deaf ear to the "real green revolution" taking place in these remote villages?
Editor's page
News
Forests are disappearing at an alarming rate the world-over, says a recent study
Experts say that intense shelling during the recent Indo-Pak conflagration in Kargil had a disastrous effect on the environment
The first pure cloned mammal comes under a cloud
The US state f Kansas decides to remove
the theory of evolution from school currilum
In the US, two widely-used pesticides are banned for their toxicity, even as it is used indiscriminately in India
A recent study reveals that air pollution levels in Nepal is one of the worst among South Asian countries
The Green Party in France threatens to pull out of the government over the nuclear energy issue
Green projects can bring investments worth US $ 39 billion to India
Scientists in Rajasthan try to revive ancient paleo-channels to solve the state's water crisis
Science & Technology
It is possible to identify non-productive clouds through satellite-transmitted pictures, say Israeli scientists
Several species to be removed from endangered list in the us
Tree trunks tell a tale of post-war pollution in the uk
Two experiments succeed in creating super-heavy elements, improving our understanding of the nuclear structure
How a technique developed by physicists can help biologists
There is already a technique to make materials for a new generation of circuits
A Rajasthan village has developed an ingenious rainwater harvesting system that has regenerated degraded pastures
Technologies developed keeping rural India in mind
Special Report
Having done precious little to clean up its polluting act in the past 30 years, a Kerala factory is indirectly blackmailing the state government with a closure notice if it does not get raw material at dirt-cheap rates
How governments of several developed countries are cracking down on diesel
The public sector giant did the right thing for the wrong reason
Life & Nature
The Kosi river -- 'Bihar's sorrow' -- floods every year. But embankments built to control the floods have, in turn, made life miserable for the thousands of poor people living along the river's banks
The Fortnight
A giant iceberg, now floating off the coast of Antarctica, is threatening research and commercial ships plying in the busy Drake Passage
Debate
There are certain plants, vegetables and fruits indigenous to India having medicinal properties. The knowledge of these properties rests with local communities who still rely on it. However, the issue of patenting Indian biological and traditional material has started coming up frequently. The Centre for Science and Environment (cse) organised a discussion which, among others, was attended by A R Mashelkar , Director-General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research , P N Gautam , director, National Bureau of Plants and Genetic Resources , P K Ghosh , advisor, department of bio-technology, G V Sarat Babu , joint secretary, ministry of environment and forest Excerpts of what they had to say follow:
Crosscurrent
Most of Delhi's urban elite suffer from this disease which makes them "rationally irrational". The disease is accompanied by finger-pointitis and selfishitis too
Why the French pollution tax is unlikely to produce results
The life of a journalist on the motoring beat is replete with foreign trips, cash and expensive gifts, all in exchange of a slippery pen
