Judgment of the Supreme Court in the matter of In Re: Zudpi Jungle Lands. A batch of applications involved a peculiar issue concerning the situation prevailing in the six districts of eastern Vidarbha region namely Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. The issue pertains to the status of the …
BREAST milk is the most nutritious and wholesome food for an infant because it contains proteins, minerals and vitamins in the required proportion, as well as the anti-microbial constituents, which protect the baby against diarrhoeal diseases. Unfortunately, the last 40 years have seen a shift from brest-feeding to using substitutes …
PRIME Minister P V Narasimha Rao has approved a plan to restructure the Union ministry of nonconventional energy sources (MNES) to improve efficiency and meet targets. The new structure will also see greater private-sector involvement. MNES is presently structured along technology lines, which result in similar end-use applications being handled …
AFTER three decades of dogged research, biologists have discovered how the sea urchin, a relative of the starfish, mates. They now hope this will help them solve some fundamental problems in developmental and evolutionary biology. The sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus), like its other marine cousins, jettisons its eggs into the …
With tonnes of toxic chemicals being poured into the desert soil to kill locusts, experts warn of damage to the area's delicate ecosystem. The widespread use of banned organochlorine pesticides -- dieldrin in particular -- is expected to have serious ecological effects. Officials counter, "We use a mild mixture of …
UKRAINE might ratify the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), but it must be accorded special status as a "transition country" -- one with nuclear armaments on its territory that are in the process of being destroyed, says defence minister Konstantin Morozov. Western experts rate Morozov's offer as a bid to find …
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GOADED by developed countries, the Union ministry of environment and forests (MEF) has prepared the first draft of the India Country Programme, which details the phase-out schedule of ozone depleting substances (ODS) under the Montreal Protocol. According to the programme, the switchover, which will take till 2010 to effect, will …
AS SCIENTISTS make smaller and faster computers, somewhere down the road they are bound to run into barriers erected by the laws of physics. For instance, the ability of modern computers to wipe out files puts a limit on their power efficiency because deleting material consumes energy. Therefore, no matter …
WITH THE claim of having the world's third-largest scientific humanpower, India should have at least three flourishing periodicals with countrywide circulation disseminating science at the popular level. But that is hardly the case. Newspapers fare no better in reporting science news or features. Very often, what they report is only …
THIS UNIDO study is an useful data source on the world's pharmaceutical industry and has been used in the World Development Report, 1993. The UNIDO data files on this often secretive industry are indispensable and form the basis of much of the analysis in this book. The authors note that …
MANY GOVERNMENT agencies commission films with alacrity, but as few of these get disseminated systematically, their message rarely gets through. One such agency is the Council for the Promotion of Advancement in Technology (CAPART), which, in the past couple of years, has been making films of two kinds: records of …
IN THE treeless, barren and rocky district of Kutch in Gujarat, the Shree Vivakanand Research and Training Institute (VRTI), or the sanstha as it is known locally, has carved a name for itself in drought relief and ecological regeneration activity. The Kutch region, which is named so because its topography …
• The area being mined has gone up 36.5 times in the past 20 years and as a result, forest cover in the area has declined from 237.8 sq km in 1971 to 127.7 sq km. • In 1971, the entire forest cover of 237.8 sq km was classified as …
IS THE left hand of government truly unaware of what the right hand does? Yes, indeed, villagers of Vasu in Udaipur district would respond. "Otherwise," noted a villager who didn't want to be named, "how else would you explain a junior official issuing a show-cause notice concerning work that was …
IF SHAH Jahan's men were to return today to Makrana, from where the marble for the Taj Mahal was procured, they would have no problem recognising it. Little has changed in the small Aravalli town in Nagore district, which has become synonymous the world over with quality white marble: the …
ON AUGUST 14, 1991, the residents of Mogji Ka Kheda village near Udaipur woke up to a shocking sight: labourers digging up a part of their 17-ha community pasture. When the startled villagers, led by Godaji Gadari, confronted the labourers they learnt the workers had been employed by Udaipur mining …
WITH THE run-up to the assembly elections under way in Rajasthan, one would expect senior politicians to be busy plotting campaign strategy -- and not be immersed in the problems of mining in the Aravallis. But their concern is not surprising, given the fact that mining has become one of …
THE MAN who moved the Supreme Court in ???? to constitute a tribunal to solve the dispute over the Cauvery waters between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu was S Ranganath, secretary of the Tamil Nadu Cauvery Delta Farmers' Association. Says Ranganath, "A legal solution had to be found. We had no …
MICROBES found in the Antarctic region may soon find application in several industries, especially breweries and bakeries, which will exploit the ability of these microorganisms to produce enzymes at low temperatures. Scientists at Hyderabad's Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) found these microbes produce appreciable amounts of enzymes even …
THE KARNATAKA Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), which recently destroyed a processing unit of multinational Cargill Seeds, has lent strong support to a broad-based campaign against a plant set up in collaboration with W R Grace & Co of USA to produce a biopesticide from neem seeds. KRRS and several other …
