India’s many investment treaties make it vulnerable
Senior international lawyer Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder, who heads the investment programme of the International Institute on Sustainable …
The chemistry of living death
THE world's biggest industrial disaster has been rendered today its most trivial. Criminal corporate culpability and governmental concern for its …
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 …
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 …
PUBLIC OUTCRY
For the past several months, Delhi has been witness to a half-hearted government being prodded by a determined Supreme Court to clean the Yamuna. …
Stained steel
The iron and steel sector is regarded as the core of Indian economy. Its players are big and powerful. It is extremely resource-intensive and …
We give them complete mentorship
IN a special programme to help industry, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has created Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Programme …
Investment terror
Since the 1990s developing nations have been on a treaty spree, signing a vast number of bilateral and regional investment treaties to attract …
Cola major gets a taste of panchayat power
A multi-billion-dollar transnational corporation has had to blink first in an eyeball-to-eyeball dispute with an obscure panchayat of Kerala. On …
Exhausting Practices
Prescribed as the antidote for all problems related to vehicular pollution, Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificates have been an obsession …
Affected people can even approach the criminal court
JUSTICE N VENKATACHALA former judge of the Supreme Court, is currently chairperson of the National Environment Appellate Authority (NEAA). Set …
Republic quaked
Gujarat is paying a heavy price for a calamity that is by far the biggest government-made disaster since Independence. As the state crawls out …
Two technologies that shape our future
Battery and meters are two widely used technologies, yet no one stops to think how they work. They determine our future. They dictate how we …
Paper chase
PAPER is important, but so are forests. The proposal of the ministry for environment and forests to allow the paper industry to establish …
Manipulating Research
Private funding has given a new meaning to scientific research today. With rising corporate research budgets, academic institutions are leaning …
Clear as air
The grim picture of a lung scarred by pollution is of no shock value today. An ailing populace continues to throw up a phlegm of protests. To …
How Bellary was laid waste
Karnataka’s Lokayukta Santosh Hegde’s report is a sordid story on the rise of India’s mining poster boy, Bellary. The …
I am green by choice , not by chance
Probably the first chief minister of Delhi to have taken a keen interest in the environment, Shiela Dixit has got a mixed response for her …
The blind Court
This is a story of justice denied. On February 13, 1996, the Supreme Court, the highest seat of justice in the country, ruled that five units …
Sand slips
Where there is a river, there is sand. Called a minor mineral, it fulfils a major requirement of the booming construction industry. No wonder, …
Pesticide residues in bottled water
Packaged drinking water or natural mineral water is everywhere. It is now available in pouches, cups, bottles and bulky transparent jars. It is …
Dirty fuel
CSE's Clean Air campaigners ANUMITA ROYCHOWDHURY and CHIRAG SHAH expose the dirty, intelligent and systematic business of fuel adulteration:…
What goes down must come up
It is a crime. Numerous factories deliberately inject untreated effluents directly into the ground, contaminating underground aquifers. Down …
There's nothing august about Mumbai
July 26, 2005: It began raining at 11 am. In the next 24 hours, India's most populous city received 944 mm of rainfall. The resultant flood …
High Altitude Dilemma
It is an intriguing view from the high mountains of Bhutan. To the east lies Nepal, grappling large-scale environmental degradation. To the north …