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Contents page
Feb 1-15, 2004
Editor's page
News
An optimistic note, about wiping out polio from the six afflicted countries, was to be sounded at a conference organised by the World Health Organisation in Geneva on January 15. Instead, the sudden re-emergence of the disease in two African nations -- Benin and Cameroon -- set the alarm bells ringing and turned it into an emergency meeting
Thampi Thomas, an advocate-turned-planter of Kolenchery in south Kerala, sold raw vanilla beans for Rs 500 per kilogramme (kg) in 1999. During the current season, he got Rs 3,750 per kg for the produce. No single plant in his 3-hectare (ha) organic farm has ever fetched him such high returns. The rich pickings have prompted many a farmer in the state to plump for vanilla cultivation...
More than two years ago, the Union ministry of urban development and poverty alleviation (moud) issued a notification making wastewater recycling compulsory in Delhi. But the rules have not been enforced to date, with the capital's implementing agencies simply washing their hands of the job
despite its genome sequenced three years ago, the cholera bacterium continues to dodge all efforts aimed at combating its menace. Now, scientists from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), have found out how Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium, renders the 'medicinal ammunition' futile
A closer-knit South Asian community is not beyond the realms of possibility now. At the 12th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in Islamabad from January 4-6, leaders of the region took some of the boldest steps ever since the grouping was first created in 1985. They agreed to make poverty alleviation their topmost priority
indian scientists have discovered a novel microorganism in salty marshlands, which has the potential to absorb nitrogen -- an essential plant nutrient -- from the atmosphere and make it available to crops. In addition, the microbe can help plants extract phosphorus from the soil
A petition filed by the Bhopal gas tragedy victims has prompted the Supreme Court to ask the Union government for an explanation. The discrepancy in the compensation amount due to the victims appears too huge to go unnoticed...
Bird flu cases soaring in Vietnam
New SARS cases in China
Illegal Bt cotton traders nabbed
Open markets, land on lease
Senior official in the dock
Green laws to be diluted
For Nepal's forest users
Farmed salmon have more carcinogens than wild varieties
Thousands of bees are dying in France due to Bayer pesticide
Standard of living determines a child's height
Trade threatens medicinal plants
Interview
Joseph E Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics - the Economics of Information. This earned him the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001. He was also chief economist at t...
Factsheet
A glimpse into extreme weather events in the third warmest year ever to be recorded
Analysis
Telecommunications and the television (TV) broadcasting sectors have been most instrumental in ushering in what is called the 'Information society' / 'global village'. Although the telecom sector in India is slowly coming on track, with regulators taking the technologically neutral path, TV broadcasting is in a mess. Implementing the conditional access system (CAS), hailed as a big regulatory step, has been a miserable failure.
In both sectors, regulation has failed to keep pace with technological advancements. How inevitable was this? Could the root cause of the failure be that regulators failed to ask, or comprehend, a basic question: what drives change in these sectors -- the technology, or the market? KUSHAL P S YADAV finds out:
A Down To Earth team also landed up at the fourth World Social Forum, Mumbai, January 16-21, 2004. At the world's largest and equally varied civil society gathering, the team encountered dust, songs and myriad experiences of people trying to make a difference. Here are some of those people and their experiences
Feature
Throughout the 1860s a frail young European woman with a medicine chest was a conspicuous presence at the women's ghats of the river Yamuna in Delhi. This was Priscilla Winter, an Anglican missionary who...
Cacti are prickly, and pleasing. Extremely ungainly, they flourish in arid conditions where no plant will survive. Succulent inside, their thick coats and nettles ensure predators cannot get to the sap inside, sap the plants literally collect in drops off the moisture in the air. They are economically useful, and their flowers are magnificent...
For over five decades, the Durua tribe in Orissa was not recognised because of a mistake in the Centre's list of scheduled tribes made in 1951...
Singapore may just have discovered a remedy to reduce water wastage at the household level. The city is known for its long-standing efforts at saving water through recycling water and promoting rainwater harvesting. Now, they have started the 'Water Efficient Homes' campaign
When you hear about Latur, you remember earthquakes, drought, and disaster. But making beauty out of ashes is what the Kalpakala Industry deserves credit for. Over the last three decades, the ubiquitous handmade paper has seen a flourishing business in Latur. One would wonder what a drought-prone area has to provide for the paper industry...
Debate
To make community forest management a success
Other local associations can also manage watersheds effectively
For two historical water bodies in Hyderabad
Opinion
The original coastal regulation zone (CRZ) rules passed in February 1991 had seven sections. They have been amended nearly twice that many times in the past decade, and the government, if recent evidence is to be believed, is still interested in flogging this horse to grim death. The Prime Minister has magnanimously agreed with BJP-controlled state chief ministers to further weaken the rules for the sake of 'regional development' ...
When 80,000 people talk it makes noise. So it wasn't unusual for the fourth World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai to be snidely called a huge 'talking fair'. There was also talk about WSF's need to introspect on its ability to impact globally. A good point. But try as critics might, there is no way the thunderous babble can be wished away as mere rhetoric...
IT HAPPENS ONLY IN INDIA,
GREAT JOB MR. PARMAR
SALUTE YOU
it is good to eat as many as vegetables and fruits (totally vegetarian), but my aurvedic doctor asked me to stop eating every...
Standard texts mention perepheral role of nutrition in therapy of tuberculosis.Perhaps this is done to emphasise the role of...