Are all environment lovers environmentalists?

Around three years ago, I got an opportunity to meet Chandi Prasad Bhat. He was lecturing on how poor villagers in Uttaranchal hugged trees and prevented them from being cut down. The lecture on the Chipko movement got me thinking on environmental activism in my home state, West Bengal. Environmental activism doesn't mean merely raising a debate in the media. But that's what a lot of people, claiming to be environmental activists, do.

Training forest officers

The Union ministry of environment and forests wants media-savvy forest officers. Concerned at the "negative coverage" of forest, wildlife and environment-related issues, it organised a training programme for Indian Forest Service officers at Bhubaneswar in the second week of September. Thirty officers from 17 states underwent a five-day course at the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, to learn the "art of interacting with the print and electronic media".

No editorial freedom in Zimbabwe

The chief of Zimbabwe's national broadcast body has admitted that there is political interference in editorial policy. "We have been reporting on the basis of deception," said Henry Muradzikwa, appearing before a parliamentary committee on transport and communications.

Recent computer games and individualism

a student group in Iran has recently produced a computer game that is a clever mix of the standoff over their country's nuclear programme, the mystery of missing diplomats in Lebanon and Iran's traditional animosity against Israel. Players must save captured Iranian diplomats and nuclear scientists from the clutches of us and Israeli abductors. The successful ones kill the us and Israeli soldiers, steal their laptops which hold secret information before liberating the scientists and the diplomats.

News snippets

>> RCTV, the opposition-aligned Venezuelan TV station forced off the air by the country's president Hugo Chavez, has resumed broadcasting on cable and satellite television. The station was off air since May 27, when Chavez granted its open airwaves signal to a state-controlled channel. >> Botswana's government has come to the defence of Top Gear after the BBC motoring show was accused by environmentalists of damaging the famed Makgadikgadi salt pans during filming. This has attracted much ire from ngos. Mary Rice, head of

News snippets

>> A report released on May 7 by the pressure group, Media Matters for America, says minorities and women get less space in prime-time news programmes in the us. The three-week study said most of the hosts and guests on the shows at msnbc, Fox News and cnn were white males. On some networks women representation was 18 per cent. > On May 8, Friends of the Earth, Europe, said it would approach European regulators against a Royal Dutch Shell Plc advertisement, which says

Down To Earth completes 15 years

having just completed 15 years of publication, our first duty is to thank those readers who've been with us from our first issue of May 31, 1992. They have sustained us and given us meaning. They have had numerous options--the 1990s saw the dotcom boom, the satellite tv explosion and the arrival of numerous magazines--and anybody with Rs 20 to spare at the news stand (or Rs 289 for an annual subscription) is spoiled for choice. But there is a core readership of this magazine that has spent the money and taken the time to

I&B ministry to amend rule on employing foreigners in Indian media

The Union information and broadcasting ministry (i&b) is considering amending rules pertaining to employment of foreigners and non-resident Indians (nris) in newspapers and other current affairs publications. These publications will have to intimate details of foreigners/nris they propose to employ. But they can employ foreigners or nri while the process of clearance is underway. This modifies an earlier clause that stated "All entities

Indian media on riots in Uganda

any inkling of danger to Indians in other parts of the world is often enough to send the country's media into a panic overdrive. Sometimes understandably so. Most non-resident Indians retain family ties, and the media could justifiably argue that it is duty-bound to report their well-being--or the lack of it--to people back home. But it's not a matter of addressing filial concerns. The Indian media almost always takes sides in complex social, political and economic matters

Uganda protests over sugar plantation on forestland

on april 12, three people were killed and eight injured in Uganda over protests against the government's plan to give away part of the country's biggest rainforest land (Mabira forest) to Sugar Corporation of Uganda Ltd (scoul). Among the people killed was an Indian. The protests took a racial dimension because part of the sugar firm is owned by Indians--the Mehta Group.