CATEGORIES

Bonds To The Rescue?

Urban local bodies across India are floating bonds to raise money. This may render them unviable and make city living costly

Was The Met Office Napping?

Hailstorms have once again damaged crops in the drought-prone Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of Maharashtra as well as the credibility of the India Meteorological Department.

Era Begins Without Plan

NITI Aayog formally begins its business without a vision or an action plan.

Champaran Satyagraha Continues

A century ago, Mahatma Gandhi tested the idea of satyagraha for the first time to fight for indigo farmers in Champaran. While the crop is seeing a revival in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Champaran in Bihar is in the throes of another peasant struggle.

Measles Is Back

With outbreaks reported from across the world, measles' eradication by 2020 seems difficult

Bitter Medicine

It is time to treat pharma waste more rigorously. The waste contains active ingredients used in antibiotics and may be contributing to the spread of antimicrobial resistance

A Setback To Struggle For Health Rights

Amit Sengupta's optimism and persistence have inspired generations of public health activists in India and abroad.

Brain-Teaser

A device that uses electricity to pass through your brain is believed to cure a range of diseases. But the jury is still out on its safety.

The Lament Continues

The Alma-Ata Declaration failed to ensure health for all. Will Astana succeed?

Recycling Wheel

How Gujarat succeeded in co-processing plastic waste in cement kilns and promoted a circular economy

Install Windmills, But Not At Cost Of Birds

Buoyed up by wind power, Germany has been the frontrunner in the global energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources. Lately, wind power organisations are lobbying to increase their number even faster, particularly in the sensitive North Sea and the Baltic. This has posed a dilemma for conservationists who generally support renewable energy. The windmills, with massive blades, are known to kill birds and bats. KATHRIN AMMERMANN, who heads the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), tells JITENDRA how the government is trying to curb environmental impact of clean energy.

US Trading On Thin Ice

As Trump escalates the trade war with China, the key question is what constitutes theft of intellectual property

More Out Than In

Central government's maternity benefit scheme excludes more women than it covers

Sealed With Trouble

Faulty policies have allowed industries to use multilayered plastic packages without the responsibility of retrieving them

Loo And Behold, But Beware

The countdown to meet the target of an open defecation free India has begun. Though it seemed like we were once again going to miss another development goal, we will achieve the target within the next 25 weeks, much before the deadline of October 2019. India's first-ever experience when all of us will have a toilet of our own is worth a grand applause. However, we have just crossed the first hurdlethe easiest milestone of constructing toilets. SUSMITA SENGUPTA and RASHMI VERMA take a hard look at the challenges that need to be addressed

A Dig At The Poor

District Mineral Foundations were set up to improve the lives of people affected by mining. But maladministration is defeating its raison d'etre.

Of Funds And Fallacy

Poor implementation of the District Mineral Foundation has excluded some of the worst mining-affected people, whom it was supposed to benefit.

Will Africa Meet Its Sanitation Target?

More than 600 million Africans still lack access to safe sanitation. This will ultimately determine the well-being of the continent.

Lessons From Beijing

In just four years, Beijing has improved its air quality by setting time-bound targets and implementing a comprehensive regional action plan

Drive The Extra Mile

India is not only directly moving from BSIV to BSVI, it is also not allowing vehicle manufacturers extra time to sell the stock of unsold BSIV vehicles

Listen... Plants Too Speak

As early as in 1880, Charles Darwin demonstrated that plants could sense light, moisture, gravity, pressure and possessed several other qualities. Over the years, many scientists have proved that plants are sentient beings and move and respond to sensation. The subject is still controversial among the scientific community. Monica Gagliano is research associate professor of evolutionary ecology and former fellow of the Australian Research Council who has pioneered a brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics. In her latest book, Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants, she, for the first time, has experimentally demonstrated that plants emit their own ªvoicesº and detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. In these excerpts, Gagliano writes about how the pea plant responds to acoustic vibrations to locate water

Wild And Nutritious

Gaithi, a tuber variety that grows in the hills of Uttarakhand, has both nutritive and medicinal properties

The Right Pill

Africa will be setting up its first agency to check the spread of spurious drugs

Reign Over Rain

Rainfall deficit can be a challenge as well as an opportunity. Last year, Dhanbad faced a rainfall deficit of 60 per cent. EKLAVYA PRASAD narrates his personal experience of catching rainwater where it falls in his home, Uttarayan. By constructing rainwater harvesting structures, Uttarayan not only showed the way to address urban water scarcity, it also helped recharge groundwater with 1.06 million litres of rainwater

Try Some Salt, Fresh And Seasoned

Uttarakhand's age-old flavoured salts loaded with micronutrients are not only a healthy option, but can also tickle your taste buds

Corridor Catharsis

The proposed Similipal-Satkosia wildlife corridor in Odisha can be connecting link for the survival of endangered species. But mining activities need to be eliminated

Anthropocene In The Arctic

A behind the scenes account of how the scientific community came to terms with the changing landscape of the Arctic

Who Is Economically Secular?

The rich have the chance to get richer in an economic crisis, while the poor face the prospect of sinking deeper in poverty

Conflict Of Diet

It's not just fragmented corridors that take elephants to farms. They get drawn towards crops that improve their state of mind and well-being

Good Old Sap

Gums secreted by trees are a treasure trove of nutrition and have been used by communities in making seasonal delicacies