Small car revolution Who cares about congestion, pollution
The ultra-cheap small cars in the pipeline will tilt the skewed balance against public transport and two-wheelers irretrievably. The result will …
Meaning of 'forest' set to change in India
How should a 'forest' be defined in India? The Union ministry of environment and forests is currently preoccupied with this question. Placing …
Private vehicles eating into scare public land
Private vehicles are clogging city streets, as they grow at a frightening pace. Hidden subsidies help park them on scarce public land and …
Rising sea levels and tidal erosion eating up Sunderbans
Rising sea levels are real. A trip to the Sunderbans, in the Bay of Bengal, shows how devastating it can be in tandem with insidious tidal erosion.…
Namibia continues to struggle to check infant mortality rate
Chances of bringing down infant mortality rate from the current 44 deaths per 1,000 live births to 30 by the 2015 deadline for millennium …
The small big polluter
Resource crunch and poor regulatory processes have made small-scale industries the pariahs of India's environment
Sponge iron industries are killing fields
The sponge iron industry is growing fast and polluting alarmingly. K Radhika in Chhattisgarh and Maureen Nandini Mitra in Jharkhand and Orissa …
Fuel inefficient India heading towards energy crisis
Energy insecurity is India's latest tryst with her post-liberalised destiny. It began in July 2006. Crude oil prices rose to all time peak, at US $…
Faceless Figures
The status of cancer data in India is as scary as the killer itself. The most recent data on cancer by the Indian Council of Medical Research is …
Damodar - Ten years after
How has the river that flows through one of the most industrialised regions in India fared since it was first written about in 1993? Down to …
Blues for the big cats
Everyone knows of the tiger's endangered status, but the government seems unwilling to face the reality. So far, it has tried to resolve the …
Pro-industry food safety and standards bill does not address safety concerns
"We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun." -- George Orwell in his 1937 novel The Road …
Indians spending less on food, says national survey
Total consumer expenditure on processed foods, beverages, and refreshments level has increased
Kidney conundrum
A mysterious chronic kidney disease is afflicting a large number of people in India and Sri Lanka. Despite decades of studies, scientists are …
Germany in transition
From an economy addicted to coal and nuclear energy, Germany is fast transforming into one driven by renewables. Its aim is to demonstrate to the …
THERMAL POWER
Power plants consumed 530 million tonnes of coal in 2014-15, which is around three-fourths of the total coal use in the country
World Health Statistics 2015: some achievements, many concerns
Down To Earth highlights the world’s performance on health-related development goals, where our successes lie and where efforts are still a …
Mahan at all costs
How government bent all rules to ensure Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh goes to Essar and Hindalco for mining coal
Reason for Bhutan’s happy face
The Himalayan kingdom has managed to significantly reduce its poverty level, but a section remains at risk of falling back into poverty
Jobless growth comes to haunt beleaguered UPA government
Any job creation policy will have to refocus on ecology that has been giving employment to a large section of the population
The gas game
Fluorocarbons, which created a hole in the ozone layer, have generated intense global debates. But these have been more about business than …
Grim news on jobs front for women
About nine million women went out of the job market in the rural areas between 2009-10 and 2011-12, a grim facet of the employment crisis in …
Welfare schemes benefited only a quarter of urban slums: NSSO
Over 30 per cent urban slums across India have no toilets or drainage facilities, in spite of funds being made available under JNNURM and other …
Chikungunya spreads its tentacles
Chikungunya, a viral disease borne by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, has assumed epidemic proportions in large swathes of the country, especially …
CoP-8: Nothing's brewing
For a fortnight, 1,456 delegates from 167 countries sat in conference halls, attended plenary sessions and roundtables, and sized each other up …