The closure of Nokia's mobile phone assembly plant in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, just eight years after it commenced production, illustrates how corporations can quit operations at a point when it is no longer profitable for them to continue, while the impact of such closures on workers is profound. The special economic zones policy of the state actively promoted corporate-led industrialisation promising employment, and creating aspirations among young workers.

The government claims that the special economic zones will bring in investment, increase exports and economic activity, and create employment. The Nokia Telecom SEZ near Chennai is often held up as a stellar success of such claims.

In the Chaibasa region of the West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand, India, an abandoned chrysotile asbestos mine is a health scourge for villagers and former mine workers. A massive pile of asbestos waste mixed with chromite has lain atop the hilltops of Roro village for two decades, gradually seeping into the land, water, homes, and bodies of the tribal communities living at the foothills of Roro. To investigate the status of the asbestos waste and its impact on the community and the environment, a fact-finding team made a preliminary assessment.

The recent MEF move for statewide appointments of van mukhiyas stir a hornets' nest

Proposed amendments to this pristine state's Forest Act make a fresh draft blow envisaged over ecological developments

Eleven years after the Bhopal gas catastrophe, the Government of India finally recognises communities' right to know about neighbourhood industrial operations

With the Tamil Nadu government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) signing the final document to bring Madras under the global Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP), key

A debate crackles over a government decision to allow paper plantations to remain in degraded forests

Pauri Garwhal became ghost territory as villagers and the forest department virtually ignored unprecedented forest fires

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