Conflict/Dispossession
The PM patted his own back for meeting the CMs of drought affected states. What he did not mention that the CMs were given much less than what they needed and asked for from the National Disaster Response Fund, that too after considerable delays. The MNREGA too is starved of funds by the central government….
Read More about Yogendra Yadav: Modi’s inaction on drought speaks louder than his words
Development/Growth
Nachiket Kelkar writes: This Bill plans to convert 106 rivers and creeks across India into waterway canals, purportedly for ‘eco-friendly transport’ of cargo, coal, industrial raw materials, and tourism. Unfortunately there is no debate on the high ecological and social risks the NWB poses to riverine biodiversity and local resources through such irreversible engineering controls….
Read More about National Waterways Bill: Digging our rivers’ graves?
Development/Growth
India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar has been constantly in news, and not always for the right reasons. Under fire for diluting environmental protection mechanisms, critics have in the past labelled him ‘minister for environmental clearances’ for favouring industry over the environment. As the Narendra Modi government completes two years, here’s a look at Javadekar’s chequered record….
Read More about Spotlight: Prakash Javadekar@2 years of Modi Government
Development/Growth
India ranks in the top 20 in the Climate Change Vulnerability Index. Our average surface temperature, over the past four decades, has risen by 0.3° Celsius, accompanied by a rising incidence of floods, droughts and cyclones. With the majority of all landholdings measuring less than a hectare, farmers face a steep decline in household income….
Read More about Varun Gandhi: Insure farmers against climate change
Conflict/Dispossession
Nayantara Narayanan reports: The UPA government left behind a legacy of weakened safeguards for India’s environment, forests and forest-dwelling people. The Narendra Modi government has lost no time in weakening them further. The process has been so accelerated that journalists have struggled to keep pace with them. Here is a look at seven reported changes….
Read More about Modi government has launched a silent war on the environmentDevelopment/Growth
In the past, water scarcity was a constraint that inspired communities to conserve water, devising locally appropriate technologies to share resources. Rajasthan’s baolis and Tamil Nadu’s eris are just two of the many traditional water harvesting systems that survive to this day. However, they have been sidelined by spectacular state projects such as large dams….
Read More about Amita Baviskar: The drought is no longer a natural disaster
INDIA
From The Hindu: A petition on a cricket tournament, rather than the plight of the people and its real culprits, has triggered media attention to the drought. Finally, it is the apex court of the country, and not its Parliament, that has found time to pay attention to serious issues of drought relief and mitigation….
Read More about Yogendra Yadav: The season of scorching ironies
Pratham Books
ALTERNATIVES
The full text of a recent talk given by prominent ecologist Madhav Gadgil, a former member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India and the Head of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) of 2010. It tries to explore the significant issue of when and why people turn against conservation….
Read More about Development is for the people: A talk by Madhav Gadgil
NEWS ARCHIVE
Nikhil Dey & Aruna Roy writes: The cynical attitude towards the MGNREGA is an example of how policymakers are deliberately — by squeezing funds and subverting the legal mandate of the law — causing immeasurable misery and suffering. Through the fund squeeze, the government has consciously crippled the MGNREGA’s ability to help people facing drought….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #90
Economy
Nityanand Jayaraman writes: A new report warns that India’s plans to import 12 nuclear reactors from ailing American equipment suppliers is financially fraught and irrelevant for India’s electricity needs. If built, the reactors will cost anywhere between Rs 6.3 lakh crore and Rs 11 lakh crore, thereby translating to unaffordable and obscenely high electricity tariffs….
Read More about Why is India importing US nuclear reactors that even the US doesn’t want?
The venue of the Art of Living event on the Yamuna floodplains
www.dailymail.co.uk
Culture/Cognition
Wildlife conservationist Neha Sinha writes: In the past, environmentalists have often been blamed as obstructionist and anti-development. Legal environmental clearance processes have been described as green terrorism because questions of sustainable development and conservation do not always go hand in hand with polluting industrial expansion. But many environmentalists feel being called anti-cultural and anti-Hindu is something new….
Read More about When communalists turn on environmentalists
Wccftech.com
ALTERNATIVES
In the Union Budget, the government has decided to exempt the new-age cesses on electric and hybrid cars. But are these green cars really green? They do not pollute the areas that they are being used in because all they are doing is move the pollution from the point of movement to the source of electricity….
Read More about In spite of cool advertising, electric cars (also) damage the environment
Development/Growth
Swati Bansal writes: The waters of many rivers were declared as unfit for human consumption. This included rivers in Goa with fecal coliform bacteria, and rivers in Karnataka where none were suitable for drinking. But pollution was just one factor, the other was hydropower power projects which continue to choke rivers such as the Chenab….
Read More about How did Indian rivers fare in 2015?Development/Growth
Shruti Ravindran reports: In a monograph for a conference on smart cities, the economist and consultant Laveesh Bhandari described smart cities as “special enclaves” that would use prohibitive prices and harsh policing to exclude “millions of poor Indians… For if we do not keep them out, they will override our ability to maintain such infrastructure.”…
Read More about Video & Report: Is India’s 100 smart cities project a recipe for social apartheid?
Development/Growth
Over the past three decades, average income of the farmer has increased by only 19%, while that of the government employee has by 370% and that of the corporate sector by more than a thousand per cent… Hidden in the rhetoric of being “pro-farmer and pro-poor” are the continued logic of being “pro-investor and pro-business”….
Read More about A.R. Vasavi: The bitter reality behind the ‘pro-farmer’ budget
CLIMATE CRISIS
Sukumar Muralidharan reports on Catch News: This year’s economic survey is a catalogue of crises. For one thing, it records that the situation in agriculture has been dismal on account of two successive years of poor monsoons. This is only the fourth time in 115 years that such a misfortune has hit the Indian economy….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #85
Development/Growth
Devinder Sharma writes: Jaitley wants the farmers to wait five years for their income to rise to 3,332 rupees a month. I can imagine the Economic Survey presented in 2022 proudly stating the success. But the reality is, by 2022, adjusting for inflation, the doubled income would be equivalent to what a farmer makes now….
Read More about Budget Analysis: Don’t believe the hype, farmers have been short-changed again
Wikimedia Commons
Development/Growth
Devinder Sharma writes: Arun Jaitley’s economic agenda revolves around pushing reforms in order to lift growth and create jobs. But what is not being realised is that agriculture alone – the sector that has been neglected all these years – has the potential to create massive gainful employment, build domestic demand and thereby revitalise the sluggish economy….
Read More about More than Make in India, Jaitley needs to focus on Farm in India
Shanker Chakravarty/The Hindu
Development/Growth
The Union Budget 2015-2016 will be presented in amid dwindling fortunes of the NDA government. Agriculture is already on a downswing while the economic slowdown is perceptible – all this when nine states are going to polls in 2016-17. Down to Earth presents a series of analyses of the Union Budget from the environment and development perspectives….
Read More about Make (Or Break) In India: Down to Earth special issue ahead of the Union Budget
“The mindset of the Indian elite is: the poor are different from me and I don’t want them around”
R. V. Moorthy
Bookshelf
“India’s economic policies are determined by the World Bank. They are therefore pro-capital, and anti-labour. Today the World Bank’s at the end of its tether. Its formula of formal capital in the informal economy failed because the poor don’t own capital. Having run out of ideas, they’ve now started blaming the poor for being poor.”…
Read More about Jan Breman: “76 per cent of the Indian population is living in poverty”
