The School of Environmental Sciences (SES), at the Jadavpur University, Calcutta, has established itself rapidly since its inception in 1989. D Chakravarti, the School's mentor, says, "Every institution in India should be self-sufficient. The SES almost earns its livelihood." By consultation and providing solution to environmental problems, in the last …
The issue of shifting the tanneries from Calcutta to the new Calcutta Leather Complex at Bantala, which has been one of the Supreme Court's (SO main concerns, has become a paradox of sorts. The NGO, Nagarik Manch, which has been the most vocal organisation on the pollution issue, has been …
IT is the end of March. Sudhamoy Chakladar, the aged Kisan Sabha leader from Khardah, stands drenched in golden sunlight, contemplating the lush green fields sprouting rice saplings... for the unthinkable 2nd time this year. "It is a dream for the peasants. We've 6ever had this in the last 50 …
Villages around Calcutta are possibly the safest place in the country for toads. Villagers have virtually paralysed biology practical tests in several schools and colleges in the city by blockading toad-catching. With the board examinations coming up, educational authorities are panicking. Apparently the villagers have taken the government's recent ban …
Metropolitan municipalities can now heave a collective sigh of relief. The Centrally-sponsored scheme for infrastructural development of megacities has brought them a welcome respite, burdened as they were by huge fiscal deficits. Infrastructural development in Calcutta, Bangalore, Bombay, Madras and Hyderabad is to take place through innovative institutional and financial …
The Calcutta Port Trust (CPT) has jumped onto the bandwagon of real-estate developers that are grabbing the few urban green spaces left in the city. CPT, which claims ownership of land on the banks of the Hooghly and also vast stretches of wetlands around the river, has ambitious multistoreyed building …
URBAN air pollution in India has become a cause of concern and alarm and the subject of much writing and debate on measures to control it. Calcutta is reputed to be one of the world's most polluted cities, but its citizens contend the pervasive acrid odours and hazy horizons are …
CALCUTTA maidan -- at 294-ha, the largest public ground in the teeming metropolis, is in danger of being developed as commercial property by the Indian army. The maidan belongs to the army's eastern command which has its headquarters in the adjoining Fort William estate. The move, prompted by the army's …
Calcutta's wetlands (bheris) have got a new lease of life. The Calcutta High Court has ordered the West Bengal government to stop reclaiming the wetlands. The court also directed the Calcutta Municipal Corporation to use the Town and Country Planning Act's provisions to prevent any private organisation from encroaching on …
CALCUTTA is famed worldwide for its sewage fisheries -- wetlands that use industrial and domestic sewage for fish cultivation. But the Mudially Fishermen's Cooperative Society needed a helping hand from the court to protect a fish farm on land leased from the Calcutta Port Trust (CPT), which wanted to revoke …
AFTER all these years, Subhas Mukhopadhyay must be used to taking awards in his stride. Long before prizes and awards came his way (starting with the Sahitya Akademi award that he won in 1964), those of us who knew Subhasda in the 1940s remember him as a soft-spoken communist poet. …
DEVELOPMENT has two sides, as Sudipto Sarkar of the People United for Better Living in Calcutta told the Calcutta High Court recently. The court is hearing a case against the proposed reclamation of eastern Calcutta's wetlands. The voluntary agency informed the court that the West Bengal government's idea to develop …
THREE documentaries that have just won the 39th National Film Awards this year are a welcome addition to the growing body of audio-visual material on science and environment. The pity is that apart from a possible late night telecast on Doordarshan or a littlepublicised screening at the Films Division auditorium …
