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Cover Story

Having served the country for more than a century and a half, the Indian Railways has taken apathy in its stride. Politicians’ whims, and not economic planning, have dictated its existence. But now, the tracks on which the giant moves have begun to show signs of stress. The health of this ailing mammoth needs to be restored. Arnab Pratim Dutta and Anupam Chakravartty trace the network’s ailments and examine ways to bring it back on track

Editor's page

Grand distraction called river interlinking

News

GEAC, experts slip on basics?

As the biotech industry takes heart from the prime minister’s remark, a fresh report shows India’s regulation and expertise on GM crops are sloppy

Mired in sewage

Temple town Guruvayur adamant on dumping its sewage in backwater villages despite stringent laws, opposition

Rajasthan bans GM trials

Bureaucrats sit on file, while GM mustard sails through

Accreditation scheme on hold

Karnataka High Court stays accreditation of consultants who assess environmental impact

Interview

We still have to reach the interiors

W Selvamurthy, senior scientist at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), shrugs off the body’s responsibility towards civilians in tackling chemical, b...

Patently Absurd

Old wisdom, new threats

Traditional knowledge has long been under threat but the proposed text of talks at World Intellectual Property Office is unlikely to protect it or genetic resources

Science & Technology

Science and Technology - Briefs

Lest mountain slips

Wireless sensor network to predict landslides

Cop’s weapon to track rogue plants

Geographical profiling used to hunt down criminals can help predict spread of invasive species

Vitamin shield

Eat lots of fruits and vegetables to lessen pesticides’ effects

Special Report

Time to reveal

Cabinet clears policy that makes it mandatory for departments to share data; civil society sceptical

Endgame begins

Experts say India needs to move beyond oral vaccine to battle vaccine-generated polio

Smart but pricey

Why automatic water meter technology is not the best idea for households

Bamboo under siege

Gadchiroli villages relinquish forest rights to Ballarpur paper mill

Feature

Drying up of an empire

Water crisis behind the decline of Angkor Wat

The flush, the city and the river

For the modern Indian city, the principle behind management of water and waste is a simple one: flush and forget. Not surprisingly, most cities are drowning in their excreta. Our cities face a twofold problem—shortage of water and the crippling health consequences of dirty water. This is decidedly not the way to the future

Let’s talk

On February 24, Centre for Science and Environment raised the curtains for the Anil Agarwal Dialogues on green clearances. The two-day conclave offered a platform to the civil society and government officials to discuss environmental and forest clearances, their processes, shortcomings and agendas. Some of the voices at the discussion:

Crosscurrent

A cosmetic leap of faith

Industry ignores perils of using nanotechnology in beauty products

Review

Liquid pressure

When media reports suggested water as among the reasons for the political conflict over Telangana in Andhra Pradesh, many readers were not surprised. Analysts see water as a critical cause for almost every other political conflict. Competition for Nile water is acute between Egypt and Ethiopia. Fierce disputes also divide Turkey and its southern neighbours in the Jordan basin. India has water disputes with Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Media

Google flies in face of privacy rules

Putin’s 2 min

With broadcast and print media largely under state control in Russia, the Internet has lately been a key platform for opposition activism. There has been an outpour of visual art through social networks since the first anti-Vladimir Putin protests in the wake of suspected fraud in parliamentary elections in December, reports Hidden Transcript.

City lost in Amazon

Amazon has not always been so pristine. Archaeologists have uncovered a series of earthen avenues carved into the soil, which suggest parts of the rainforest may have been home to dozens of populated towns for centuries.

Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian scholar who helped discover the geoglyphs, told The New York Times that the land patterns are in squares, octagons, circles and ovals and spread over hundreds of hectares. The civilisation could have existed 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. So far 320 such earthworks have been found in Brazil and 70 others in Bolivia.

Alien hunt gets serious

A website has been launched to get the public involved in the search for extraterrestrial life. The site, SetiLive, will stream radio frequencies transmitted by Allen Telescope Array of Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, a US non-profit. Participants will be asked to report if they notice unusual frequency.

Letters

Letters - March 31, 2012

Science restricted

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