From SLAPPs to hiring professional protesters, industry's working overtime to find new ways to attack. In the first week of April this year, a group of men came and stood outside the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi. They carried placards with offensive slogans directed at me. We understood the picket to be the latest in a dangerous pesticide industry mindgame.

CSE releases findings of a perception survey of commuters

What Erin Brockovich, a twice-divorced mother of two and a legal clerk, did to the small South Californian town Hinkley by taking on a corporation as huge as PG&E is part of American activism history Sukinda, in Orissa, has . not been as lucky despite scores of citizens' reports, environment assessment studies and a green brigade's non-relenting crusade.

The Delhi Government on Wednesday informed the Centre that it is reviewing the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project in view of the public outrage. Senior Government officials, in a meeting chaired by Urban Development Secretary M Ramachandran, said they are working on other modalities so that the concept works albeit in a different format. Some of the Government officials were also at the receiving end for introducing the ill-conceived project.

Environmentalists have warned that tropical cyclone Nargis, which has left more than 20,000 persons dead and 40,000 missing and thousands homeless, is not just a natural disaster but a man-made disaster because of climate change. Nargis, the green brigade says, happened because "the rich have failed to contain greenhouse gas emissions necessary for their growth'.

In a city of six million vehicles, there is nothing unusual about chaos on roads. But lack of proper operational planning adds hardship to thousands of commuters in the capital city of Delhi. During the last four months alone, Delhiites have faced two major plan chaos on city roads.

Keeping an eye on the coming general elections, the government today extended the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to all districts of the country and also announced the setting up of a

The Centre today extended its flagship rural job scheme to all 604 districts in the country, promising to reach over five crore households within a year.

The government is expected to spend more than Rs 3 lakh crore during the 11th plan (2007-12) on a series of anti-poverty programmes, rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh on Tuesday said.