A mysterious chronic kidney disease is afflicting a large number of people in India and Sri Lanka. Despite decades of studies, scientists are yet to pinpoint the cause of the disease. Vibha Varshney travels to Sri Lanka and analyses the state of research, while Richard Mahapatra and M Suchitra report from the hotspots of the disease in India.
The ruling alliance’s flagship rural employment programme took unprecedented strides in creating water conservation structures across the country, but only to harvest disillusionment. What went wrong? Down to Earth team traveled to Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in search of answers.
A forest generated by residents in Andhra Pradesh's Anantapur district is being destroyed to set up windmills. For two decades people from eight villages in Kalpavalli region in Andhra Pradesh's Anantapur district laboured hard to turn a vast expanse of wasteland into a forest. But the effort seems to have gone waste as the green cover is being ruthlessly destroyed to set up wind farms. Enercon Wind Farms (Madhya Pradesh) Pvt Ltd, a group company of Enercon (India) Ltd, a subsidiary of the German company Enercon GmbH, is setting up a 20 MW wind energy project in the area.
The special report by Down To Earth on the Lokayukta’s exhaustive report on illegal mining in Bellary says that this is also a governance failure and should be viewed more seriously than all illegalities and environmental degradation.
Multinational seed companies are luring farmers to grow hybrid maize with promises of high yields and high returns. The cereal is overtaking farms growing millets and other staples. Is it a threat to India’s food security? Read this report in Down To Earth.
Andhra farmers shun growing paddy this kharif in absence of buyers, storage space. Analysts say this perhaps the first time in the countyr that paddy farmers have resorted to such a drastic step, that too in a green revolution belt.
