Why can't Indians access maps for 43 per cent of their country?
How is it that you can buy a map of India in Paris with details as fine as the location of all tyre puncture shops in Delhi (updated every six …
India's Chandrayaan programme is "ambitious"
A moon rush is hotting up, with India, China and Japan devising substantial space exploration programmes to compete with the big players -- the …
The waste-to-energy plant violates emission norms by not using environment-friendly technologies
Since 2009, the residents of Sukhdev Vihar, a residential colony in Delhi, have been fighting against a waste-to-energy plant operated by Jindal …
Tibetan landscape may soon disappear
In the 1980s, when very few people visited Tibet, Michael Buckley, an Australian settled in Canada, wrote the first Lonely Planet guide to the …
'Censuses mean little'
A POPULATION expert sharply critical of India's achievements in curbing population growth. A demographer with scant respect for the census. A …
"There can be no development without women"
REACHING Doongri, a picturesque village perched 1,750 m above sea level in the Pindar valley in Chamoli district, is a daunting task. The nearest …
Chipko: an unfinished mission
In 20 years, Chipko has acquired many facets, primarily as a conservation endeavour by the poor, a struggle for local control of natural …
Lessons from the colonial past
Twenty-two years ago, the publication of a book, Indian Science and Technology in the 18th Century, by an unknown Gandhian, DHARAMPAL, took the …
The milk that ate the grass
India may be the largest producer of milk in the world, but at an incredible cost. In achieving this distinction, the country's vast cattle …
Fabled Fruits!
Taking off from its climatic range - Himalayan to tropical - India has much to offer in terms of fruit diversity. Large varieties of major fruits …
Glaciers beating retreat
Himalayan glaciers, source of water for the innumerable rivers that flow across the Indo-Gangetic plains, are receding. And that too at a …
Civil v political
Arguably, this is the hottest political summer for Delhi. Reason: friction between anti-corruption activists and the Union government over the …
Of algae, worms and cash flow
Continuing the series on organic farming, Down To Earth's reporter found that both the scientific community and farmers are showing interest in …
Gone with the wind
When the wind energy sector was opened to private investors in 1993, there was a virtual boom. However, after the initial rush of activity, …
Fatal Attraction
The thirst for diesel in India is growing. Diesel mania grips the Indian automobile industry and the customers with more and more companies going …
Doomed! Carry on flushing
two years ago the Supreme Court fixed 31 March 2003 as the deadline for cleaning the Yamuna. It's April 2003 now and unbelievably, the river that …
‘How can India be a defendant, and not a claimant in the Bhopal case’
Union law minister, Veerappa Moily, on October 27, announced the government will not pursue the ongoing lawsuit in the US for compensating Bhopal …
Are we ready to hand over on our life-forms?
There are certain plants, vegetables and fruits indigenous to India having medicinal properties. The knowledge of these properties rests with …
Fig leaf for the business world
That is what the Montreal Protocol, meant to do away with ozone depleting substances, has become. India's phase out programme under the protocol …
More arsenic
Exactly how widespread is the presence of poisonous arsenic in the groundwater that Indians drink? In Delhi, a doctor's phone call propels Down …
Murder mystery in Bihar
The killing of two social activists has left behind a series of unanswered questions. On the evening of January 24 social activists Sarita and …
Drained India's inland wetlands
During the last ten years, India has lost about 38 per cent of its inland wetlands; in some districts, as much as 88 per cent of the wetlands …
Kind to cash
The government has a plan to reach welfare to the poor without wasting money. It wants to put hard cash in their hands instead of spending on …
Agriculture is egocentric
Norman Uphoff, professor emeritus of government and international agriculture at Cornell University, US, likes to say that the system of rice …
‘English wiped out local languages elsewhere, not in India’
Eighty-Five years after George A Grierson, a British administrator, conducted the first survey of languages in India, another such exercise has …