It is mostly caused by deliberate neglect and designed failure of the way we manage water and land

It’s drought time again. Nothing new in this announcement. Each year, first we have crippling droughts between December and June, and then devastating floods in the next few months. It’s a cycle of despair, which is more or less predictable. But this is not an inevitable cycle of nature we must live with.

Though, the new draft of National Water Policy has favoured privatisation of water-delivery services and tariff hike, members of a working panel of the Planning Commission are strongly divided over

Cities in India are dreaming of becoming New York and London but we seldom worry about as basic an issue as sewage and its disposal in our country. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has brought out a two-volume book titled Excreta Matters: Report on the State of India’s Environment to highlight how only 20 per cent of sewage is being treated in the country. Sunita Narain, director general, CSE, talks about the murky issue plaguing the water sources in this interview to Rashme Sehgal.

Creating a sustainable business is hard enough in the developed world. But in important emerging markets it can be more difficult still.

India, to put it euphemistically, is awash in its own ‘crap’ — a word derived from old Dutch to mean excrement.

It is not in the interest of food companies to advertise what their products contain, but it is in our interest to know

Junk food is junk by its very definition. But how bad is it and what is it that companies do not tell people about this food? This is what the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) laboratory checked. The results were both predictable and alarming. Equally predictable was the response of big food companies and their spokespersons — denials and dismissals. But they are missing the point.

Unavailability of natural gas and destruction of forests and water bodies due to our inability to use our coal fields optimally is having a huge impact on our health and environment

Two monopolies. One private; the other public. One in gas; the other in coal. Both equally disastrous for the environment. I speak here of Reliance Industries Ltd and Coal India Ltd.