The buck stops here

THE GERMAN minister for environment, nature protection and reactor safety, Klaus Topfer, is among those who blame the West for a major role in polluting the earth. Or, so he was at pains to establish during a recent visit to India. "The industrialised countries must make a conscientous effort," he said, " to share the costs of tackling the environmental problems of the developing countries."

Birlas fend off bid to close UP sugar mill

WHEN THE Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) detected acidic effluents from a Birla sugar mill in a tributary of the Gomati, it thought it could bell the cat easily. But a Supreme Court order in an earlier environmental pollution complaint against the unit has left the board high and dry.

Choking slowly to death

WHEN ABOUT 200,000 litres of furnace oil spilled into the Damodar river from the Bokaro Steel Plant on April 2, 1990, it took the authorities four days to wake up to the disaster. By then, the oil had travelled about 150 km downstream to Durgapur and for at least a week after the incident, the five million people in the area drank contaminated water. Even then, it was'nt the pollution control authorities who spotted the disaster.

Picking up the tab for industrial growth

NO OTHER region of India has paid a heavier price for India's industrialisation than the Damodar valley, which traverses the poor states of Bihar and West Bengal. Rich in coal resources, the region has been extensively mined for this valuable mineral, which energises domestic hearths and industrial furnaces throughout the country. Locally, numerous industrial projects ranging from coal washeries to steel plants and coal-based power plants have sprung up because of the easy availability of coal.

Pollution clogs hyacinth control

INSECTS that were introduced to stem the spread of water hyacinth are beginning to avoid feeding on the weed because they are polluted by toxic metals. However, the insects seem to be developing resistance to the toxicity by producing new cellular proteins and synthesizing new ones. In experiments conducted by scientists -at the.Indian Institute of C210mical Technology in Hyderabad, water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) plants were kept for a

Dam of death

YUGOSLAV engineers are working desperately to ease the pressure on a damaged dam in Montenegro, to prevent the release of millions of tonnes of toxic mining sludge into the Danube and other Balkan rivers. Senior officials working on the dam'say the impact would be "disastrous as it would poison the, river, killing fish and other aquatic life". The engineers have completed a new support dam and are dredging another channel in the river Tara as part of their efforts to avert this ecological disaster. The UN disaster relief agency in Geneva has mobilised international

Golf mania

The Japanese passion for golf is on a new course. Since 1987, 20 districts covering 32,000 sq km were earmarked for resort development. The total area covered by the resorts will eventually touch 60,000 sq km -- 16 per cent of the country's land area. A private study asserts the 17 districts designated for the tourist resorts by end-1989 include plans for 134 golf courses. They will be spread over 150 sq km, of which one-tenth would be carved out of national forests.

Purifying the Ganga

IT may have been this emotive encomium to the Ganga that motivated Nehru's grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, to undertake India's most ambitious environmental clean-up programme ever. Launching the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) in Varanasi on June 14, 1986, Gandhi, then prime minister, of India, stated confidently, "We shall see that the waters of the Ganga become clean once again."

The political economy of defecation

IN MANY ways, the Ganga Action Programme is a very ambitious scheme. It aims to clean up one of the world's longest rivers -- using sophisticated and expensive technologies. But the project does not sufficiently recognise that the Ganga flows through one of the poorest and most densely populated regions of the world.

Working to cleanse the Ganga

THE GANGA'S alarming pollution level has inspired both government and non-governmental involvement in clean-up work. While the Union government has created an exhaustive structure to cleanse the river, some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have also been active, though on a smaller scale, in arousing popular consciousness and analysing official clean-up measures.