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ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot

14th October 2017

George Monbiot‘s powerful new book looks at how democracy and economic life can be radically organised from the bottom up. He argues against the “society-crushing system of neoliberalism”, and for a political agenda “that isn’t destined to destroy the living planet”, power given back to people so that wealth isn’t continually distributed to the rich….

Development/Growth

Digging Into Adani: The dubious dealings of India’s corporate colossus

8th October 2017

From ABC News: This eagerly awaited TV-documentary is the result of a months-long investigation into the Adani Group, made in the context of a bitter clash between citizen-groups and the Australian government over the company’s giant coal mine in Queensland. It offers a revealing look into the company’s controversial business practices and their global consequences….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Climate change and nuclear power: the denials, delusions and deceptions of Modi

21st September 2017

Kumar Sundaram writes in The Ecologist: Dubbing nuclear energy as a solution to climate change has been a key strategy of the Indian government for selling nuclear projects to the public as well as justifying the spree of nuclear agreements with other countries. Here are three reasons why this is not feasible, desirable and cost-effective….

Development/Growth

What exactly is a smart city? The Indian government does not want you to know

18th September 2017

From Scroll.in: How does the government define a smart city under its much-publicised Smart City Mission? This may never be known. An exercise to set clear benchmarks to assess when exactly a city is delivering a high enough quality of life to be declared a smart city was shut down by the urban development ministry….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why Adani’s planned Carmichael coalmine matters to Australia – and the world

10th September 2017

From Guardian/Al Jazeera: Proposals for one of the world’s largest mines in Queensland threaten not only the Great Barrier Reef, but also global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Australia’s government is changing legislation protecting land rights for Aboriginal people in order to get Adani’s Carmichael mine, one of the world’s largest, project over the line….

Economy

This corporate merger threatens food supplies worldwide. Who’ll stop it?

29th August 2017

From The Guardian: Chemicals and agribusiness giant Bayer has approached the European Union to approve its $65bn takeover of Monsanto, eliminating direct competition between two of the biggest players in the industry. If approved, the merger would be an extremely risky consolidation of corporate power, and a serious threat to food supplies and farmers worldwide….

Development/Growth

Indian Independence: Made in U.S.A.?

15th August 2017

Colin Todhunter writes: At a time when India commemorates the end of British rule, it finds itself under siege from international capital. Its not only on course to become an even weaker and more hobbled state permanently beholden to US state-corporate interests, but it is heading towards environmental catastrophe much faster than many may think….

An aerial view of Welspun's giant solar park in Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh

Conflict/Dispossession

India’s dispossessed confront a new threat: solar parks

10th August 2017

Frontline reports: Across the country, large tracts of land are being earmarked for exclusive solar power parks. The rocky terrain of Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch district has emerged as the largest solar power-generating hub in India, but the nomadic communities that have lived there for generations find themselves dispossessed of land and reduced to abject poverty….

Development/Growth

Anandi Sharan: There are no pros; only cons to nuclear energy

9th August 2017

From Patna Daily: A nuclear power plant can be imported lock stock and barrel and all local people need to do is watch the plant and the fence around it get erected, charge their mobile phones to watch videos all day, stay out of trouble. They have no work in the creation of the asset….

Development/Growth

India’s massive corporate bad debts and natural resource auctions

4th August 2017

India’s former energy secretary E.A.S. Sharma writes in The Wire: Everyone knows that the NPA problem is due to the lack of due diligence on the part of banks. If banks were to refuse new loans to some of these indebted companies, nearly 40% of the coal blocks assigned to them would not get developed….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Can you feel capitalism dying?

Joe Brewer writes: There is a reason only 5 men have the same aggregate wealth as half the human population. And that the Earth’s climate is ramping up for a phase transition that threatens our entire civilization. It’s because the 500 year old Global Architecture of Wealth Extraction is designed to produce exactly these outcomes….

ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature, by Jairam Ramesh

3rd August 2017

Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh tells IndiaSpend about his latest book ‘Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature’, why you can’t leave the environment to market forces, the current government’s policies, the erosion of the National Green Tribunal’s autonomy, the recent commercial approval for GM mustard and the poor implementation of environmental laws in the country….

Economy

Spotlight: Rs 1,402,680,000,000 – India’s agrarian import bill for 2015-16

20th July 2017

Down to Earth reports: Despite bumper production, volume of import of cereals like wheat and maize increased by 110 times between 2014 and 2017. Traders now find it cheaper to import from Australia than to procure locally. India’s already distressed farmers are the hardest hit by the fall in the prices caused by the rising imports….

ALTERNATIVES

Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals

Martin Lukacs writes in The Guardian: Capitalism thrives on people believing that being afflicted by the structural problems of an exploitative system –poverty, joblessness, poor health, lack of fulfillment –is a personal deficiency. Neoliberalism has taken this internalised self-blame and turbocharged it. So, you are now also responsible for bearing the burden of potential ecological collapse!…

Conflict/Dispossession

Three times rise in killings of India’s land, eco-defenders: Modi govt blamed for “stifling opposition” by any means

15th July 2017

From Counterview/Global Witness: A just-released global report has revealed that the number of land and environment defenders killed in India has almost trebled, from 6 in 2015 to 16 in 2016, blaming it on “a disturbing trend” of increasing police brutality, indicating the Modi government’s determination “to stifle opposition to ‘development’ by any means necessary.”…

Conflict/Dispossession

A grain of truth: RCEP and the corporate hijack of Indian agriculture

13th July 2017

Colin Todhunter writes in Countercurrents.org: A combination of debt, economic liberalisation, subsidised imports, rising input costs and a shift to cash crops (including GM-cotton) has caused massive financial distress to small farmers in India. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a trade deal now being negotiated by 16 countries across Asia-Pacific, could accelerate this process….

ENERGY

Nuclear power: Expensive, hazardous and inequitable

12th July 2017

From The Hindu: The government’s recent decision to approve the construction of ten 700 MW Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors deserves to be scrutinised carefully. The government claims that this displays “India’s commitment to sustainable development”. But does the path to sustainable development run through a source of electricity that’s expensive, hazardous and antithetical to equity?…

Untreated effluents dumped into Sabarmati downstream of Vasna barrage, which is the dead-end of Sabarmati Riverfont

Amruta Pradhan/SANDRP

Conflict/Dispossession

Sabarmati riverfront, inland waterways, Mahanadi dispute, are all newer forms of onslaught on rivers

11th July 2017

From Counterview.org: The Sabarmati River Front has been in the news lately as a model of “river beautification”. When in reality, it is a dead river, filled with effluents and sewage. It was “rejuvenated” with Narmada water, which came at a great cost of the displacement of lakhs of people and destruction of the environment….

Bookshelf

Where’s the energy for “the fourth industrial revolution”? Don’t ask.

10th July 2017

Bart Hawkins Kreps writes: Will we have plenty of affordable energy to power communications among trillions of internet-connected sensors in the “Internet of Things”? Will our new fleet of self-driving cars have plenty of fuel to keep us moving en masse? The uncertainty of our long-term energy supply is not even mentioned in this book….

Bratto Amin

CLIMATE CRISIS

A Bangladeshi professor is risking his life to defend the Sundarbans

6th July 2017

From Scroll.in: 60-year-old Anu Muhammad, the author of 30 books, has been getting repeated death threats for his role leading a seven-year campaign against plans to build a $1.5 billion coal-fired power plant in Rampal, southern Bangladesh, on a site teeming with waterways, mud flats and a host of threatened species from crocodiles to pythons….