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Cover Story

Crank it up

Sugar mills in India are doubling up as power generators by burning crushed sugarcane or bagasse. But with the price of bagasse rising, their profit margins have begun to shrink. Can India keep it going?

Editor's page

Time to be different

The new (old) government is back. The question is if it has learnt its most important lesson: how to enjoin its political agenda to the agenda of government.

News

More floods, no winter

Industry wants alien shrimp

Aravallis undermined

Court allows forest pattas in Andhra

South Asia

Landslide dams Tsangpo river

Police vehicle to be confiscated

Intel CPU corrupt

'Microbes can be patented'

Lake conservation plan flawed

According to report

Environment tribunal overruled

Tribals celebrate Sendra

In court

Rich waste water

News 360

News 360° - Briefs

Interview

Faulted for raising a banner

At the recent World Water Forum in Istanbul, Payal Parekh and her colleague Ann-Kathrin Schneider were deported. She spoke with Bharat Lal Seth

'Forensics can easily be used in wildlife'

Science & Technology

Transport costs

It wasn't the asteroid

Red means stop

Win some, lose some

Forecast for mets: grim

Pillow talk

A parasite's pantomime

The biochemical disciplinarian

What next?

Science & Technology - Briefs

Feature

Who's Environment Day?

TB part of urban culture

Where do pregnant women go?

A thousand flavours

The perfect brew

Leader

Greenbucks

Being environment friendly is turning out to be good economics, but where is the regulator?

THE Greendex survey by National Geographic comes as no surprise. The second of NatGeo's annual sampling of consumer behaviour that
affects the environment found an increase in environment friendly behaviour in 13 of the 14 countries surveyed. Since 2008, consumers are more
likely to make energy-saving efforts like adjusting thermostat settings and minimizing freshwater use.

The lonely eater

Meal times are on their way out

"YOU are what you eat." In no time in history does this aphorism hold more grain than now. At times, ours seems to be a nutrition-obsessed
civilization. In supermarkets, especially in middle-class neighbourhoods, buying food has become like conducting a scientific experiment.
Individuals spend hours looking at food packet labels counting carbohydrates, proteins and vitamins and gauging if the food is organic, natural or
holistic. A weekend newspaper supplement is incomplete without a section on health and nutrition.

Crosscurrent

The donkey has his day

House sparrows want old homes

Review

Whimper for the buck

The book publishing industry seems to be making merry out of the global financial crunch. Almost every week sees a book release. A few will stand out once the skids smoothen. Biography of the Dollar will not be among them.

From the blurbs

ICTs and Indian Social Change: Diffusion, Poverty, Governance by M Vijaybaskar, Ashwin Saith and V Gayathri, Sage, Rs 750

This is a book for techno-idealists. It has much on the impact of information and communication technologies on the lives of people. It traces how
technologies work on urban and rural spaces, highlights the new kinds of social identities they foster
and claims to open an arena for dialogue between activists, technologists, policy makers and academia.

Eye opener

Eco-thriller

Many today talk about crimes against nature in the same breath as arms and drug smuggling. The film, Ozone Killers, is about a problem that many believed was taken care of long time ago. It shows how wrong the assumption was.

In 1987 the Montreal Protocol banned the production of cfcs (chlorofluorocarbons) for use as propellants and coolants. These chemicals are considered to be the main cause of the destruction of the protective ozone layer in the Earth's atmosphere.

Media

Not my street

Google faces roadblocks in Greece. The country's data protection agency has banned Google from expanding its Street View service, pending
"additional information" from the firm. Street View gives users a 360-degree view of a road via Google Maps. Authorities want to know how long
the images would be kept on Google's database and what measures it will take to make people aware of privacy rights.

For the doc

Civil rights activist Binayak Sen completed two years in jail on May 14 as an undertrial on charges of assisting Naxals in Chhattisgarh. There were nationwide demonstrations on May 14, an editorial and at least two articles on Sen’s detention in British medical journal Lancet decrying India’s human rights record, and a plea by academics from all over the world in the British daily, The Guardian.

Poster language

Oliver Radtke knows several languages. But he is a polyglot with a difference. Radtke is an expert in a portmanteau language: Chinglish. Radtke
discovered the odd world of 'Chinglish' in 2000 in a Shanghai cab, where he saw a curious sign reading: "Don't forget to carry your thing." Nine
years later, the German multimedia producer has written two popular books on the subject.

SPEEDY REDRESS

http://www.pgportal.gov.in

A few months back, the telephone company BSNL dug up newly built roads in Faridabad, Haryana, to lay cables. A resident highlighted his
concern at http://www.pgportal.gov.in. To his surprise, BSNL and Municipal Corporation of Faridabad were served a show cause notice.

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