A beetle can lift more than 900 times its

Due to decades of neglect and indifference, air quality in Indian cities has worsened rapidly, triggering a serious public health crisis. Central and state governments are still at a loss in dealing with the problem and except Delhi, no city is taking effective steps to control pollution. Even in Delhi, the drive to deal with pollution is not coming from the government but the Supreme Court. Recently, high courts in Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh have clamped down on the polluting three-wheelers by either banning them or pushing them to run on cleaner fuels.

The authorities in Lucknow have taken a step in the right direction by introducing battery-powered three-wheelers to replace the highly polluting diesel-powered Vikram three-wheelers. But they did

The Pillayarkuppam-Kirumampakkam area of Pondicherry is quite close to an industrial estate. In response to regular complaints by the residents of the area, S A Abbasi, senior professor and

The air pollution situation in Shimla has improved a little. Ambient air quality data shows that levels of suspended particulate matter (SPM) have fallen considerably in the recent past. In 1992, the

Air quality from 26 monitoring stations in nine small cities and towns shows that they have caught up, and in some cases exceeded the maximum levels of suspended particulate matter even in highly

It is a sight which Suresh Rawat, a hotelier in the hill station of Mussourie that overlooks the town of Dehradun in Uttar Pradesh, could do without. Every winter, thick blue smoke envelops this

There is no evidence more conclusive about the state of air pollution in Gajraula, a sleepy industrial town in Uttar Pradesh, than the air itself. As one enters the town, breathing becomes difficult.

For Harish Chandra, who retired as professor from the Maharishi Dayanand University in the town of Rohtak, Haryana, things have changed a lot since the dayshe used to travel by horse-driven tongas to

"Out of order," Sanjiv Lakhanpal tells one of his regular customers, as hefiddles with some parts of the photocopier in his shop. The 34-year-old earns his livelihood from a public call office near