If you go out in the city wearing a white shirt, after a couple of hours you willwonder if the black shirt you are wearing is really yours," says S K Katiar, chiefphysician, M L Chest Hospital,

One of the most densely populated areas in India, the union territory of Pondicherry has 1,642 persons per sq km. Its air is also one of the densest in the country (see box: Unclean air). In 1997,

"Kota is fast becoming like Delhi in matters of pollution. What we have here is an exploding situation," says Nishith Arora, a dentist living in Kota. The story of airpollution in the Rajasthan city

"In Jammu, 90 per cent of air pollution is vehicular," says A B Jandiyal, environmental engineer with the Jammu and Kashmir Pollution Control Board (j&kpcb). A cpcb report has already branded Jammu

"In Jaipur city, there are no major air polluting industrial units. Most are small-scale textile units and cause water pollution, not air pollution. The main culprit of air pollution is vehicles,"

For the Centre • Improve air quality monitoring; • Identify 'hot spot' cities for special attention; • Create a national-level authority with accountable state bodies. These

Further dilution of the rules safeguarding the Indian coastal ecosystem has just been proposed. Under the guise of providing land to poor fisherfolk for their settlements, is the administration surreptitiously letting in Indian companies and multinationa

Two decades of toil have given back to Seed village in Udaipur a forest that villagers felt had been destroyed forever

Does India need to import exotic fish species, when the experience with them has not been particularly good? Besides, the country already boasts of a treasure trove of fish diversity

Conscious of the pressure upon them, representatives of industry discuss environmental matters at length in the automobile manufacturers annual meet