Government to unleash green revolution in six states: Need for caution

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Stung by a major shortfall in the foodgrain production and a demand for at least four per cent increase in farm production, the Indian government's 2010-11 Union Budget proposes to bring several states in eastern India under Green Revolution experiment. One of the key announcements made by the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, in his budget presentation on 26th February relating to the agriculture sector included Rs 400 crores for expansion of intensive fertilizer driven agriculture. Though the sector constitutes just about 15 per cent of the country's GDP, it is a source of direct livelihood for close to 60 per cent of its population. The target is the famous Gangetic plains - one of the most fertile yet fragmented landholding areas on earth - including Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Eastern UP, West Bengal and Orissa. This announcement and consequent rollout has massive implications. For these new areas....

People with disability in Karnataka fight to make election count

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In a major victory for people with disabilities, about 50,000 voting machines could be equipped with Braille and ramps erected at all polling booth for the coming assembly election in Karnataka. The state chief electoral officer, M. N. Vidyashankar, gave this assurance to disability activists who had gone to meet him on April 9, 2008 under the banner of Karnataka Angavikalara Rajya Okkoota (KARO), an ActionAid supported initiative. "It hardly costs Rs. 5 to insert Braille feature on the voting machine. But it helps a visually challenged person to be independent of others while making a choice," N. P. Ramachandran, district secretary of KARO, was quoted as saying in a media report. Mr Vidyashankar promised that a circular will be issued soon to all officials concerned to ensure that each polling booth has a ramp and Braille equipped voting machines so that persons with disabilities....

Bhopal: The Tragedy Lingers On

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Why does the Bhopal tragedy continues to live on? It is an unsettling question both for those who have inherited the generational legacy of one of the world's worst industrial environmental disasters and also for those who have inherited blunted sensitivity that has been nurtured by over two decades of denial of the true nature and continuing impact of the "Gas Kand" in the night of December 2nd and 3rd of 1984. Twenty-three-years is a long time and more so for a nation, which under its neoliberal avtar has gotten used to tiding over what happens to those not part of this economic dream run. Bhopal gas victims were in news over the past two weeks as they marched to the National Capital to be heard on long-term demands of establishment of an empowered commission on Bhopal for long-term medical care and rehabilitation of the victims and....

'E' for Environment

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With mega discourses on global warming and climate change dominating news broadcast, print and the web, it came as a surprise when school children responded with blank expressions at a recent interaction on environment at an English medium school in an up-market neighbourhood of South Delhi. It was quite mellowing to see that these inquisitive students, who are going to inherit a very messed-up environment and the burden of extreme lifestyle shifts to tide-over impacts of degradation, have not been touched by a day-to-day understanding of terms like global warming, e-waste and toxics. As one broke these concepts into manageable examples, expressions changed and questions started flowing in and two very worrying trends emerged from these queries. First one is the dangerous lag that exists between what is packaged as education, via textbooks and knowledgebase of the teachers, and what is happening in the real world that....

2007: A year of massacre for Delhi trees

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As the National Capital prepares to usher in the New Year, the year that steps into the past will be remembered most for the massacre of thousands of trees of Delhi that have seen many New Years come and go. An unofficial count of the trees felled in the past four to five years is estimated to be around 40,000, the official figures are not forthcoming and vary as per the individual departments. However, the felling in the year 2007 was the most brazen and painful, as the chainsaw drew closer and closer into the very heart of the city's green lungs, with the trees planted when the capital was envisioned, and some even older, were cleared for the High Capacity Bus Service (HCBS) corridors and road-widening. The needs of a "transport plan" to see the light of the day made the Delhi Government sacrifice its....