On what led to the find
In 1984, GSI started an excavation in Gujarat and unearthed several dinosaur nesting sites. One nest had bones entangled with a crushed egg and a dinosaur baby. Palaeontologist Jeffrey Wilson’s analysis showed the fossil to contain a snake with a head atop. Wilson had been in India to study the similarity between fossils of Australian and Indian reptiles. This is because the Indian plate was joined to the Australian landmass until the dinosaurs’ era.

one stormy day a snake was hungry. The 3.5-metre-long reptile spotted a half-metre infant dinosaur struggling out of its eggshell. Slithering into its unguarded nest, the snake curled up next to the hatchling ready to strike—something it was not destined to accomplish. A downpour must have impacted a stream nearby and mud went surging out to the nest. Both predator and prey were preserved in a moment of action.

In 1824, a group of people thronged the home of Oxford professor William Buckland. They reported to the professor the finding of a large jawbone from a quarry not far from his quarters at Oxford University. Buckland had by then acquired fame as a geologist with a keen knowledge of fossils.

“This is our palace,” says 60-year-old N Ravindranath Shetty, as he welcomes one to his home with a grin. The palace he refers to is a 240 square feet single-room house made of clay bricks, roofed with coconut thatch and tarpaulin. An incredulous stare elicits an explanation: “Since we moved here, my wife and I spend all our time outdoors. This is all we need by way of a house.”

It’s early morning. As a speeding passenger bus approaches the Acharya Vihar crossing in Bhubaneswar, a man on the roadside waves a coconut wrapped in a piece of red cloth. The bus screeches to a halt. The conductor hurries down and accepts the fruit. Barely after a kilometre, the bus stops again. This time to collect a bunch of red cloth-wrapped coconuts from a woman. By the time the bus reaches Cuttack, the driver’s cabin is stacked with coconuts.

It is the week after Holi. We are sitting in Netsinh, a village 65 kms from the city of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. Derawar Singh is throwing a daavat (banquet) for he has purchased a tractor. A goat has been slaughtered for the occasion. Netsinh has 250 families, all of whom are herders and have been living there for about 12 generations.

Meticulously planned off-grid systems of power generation face the greatest threat from haphazard extension of the grid. “The subsidy is disbursed, plants are built, and then mothballed as soon as the grid reaches,” Ratna Sansar Shrestha, water and energy policy analyst, said. Despite the long and frequent power cuts, many prefer power from the grid to the hassle and costs of maintaining off-grid power plants.

Away from the grid, villages have been generating their own electricity for decades in Nepal. The country is the developing world’s petri dish for experiments on small-scale renewables. Generous international donors have supported biomass (biogas, improved cooking stoves and biofuels); mini- and micro-hydro power; improved water mills; solar (photovoltaic and heating systems).

Across Nepal, close to 420 electricity user groups, cooperatives and committees are working to extend the grid into villages. They are taking charge of electricity distribution, maintenance and ‘customer service’. Together they have electrified 176,000 rural households according to nea; another 90,000 are in the pipeline. These numbers are significant because 70 per cent of rural Nepal is not connected to the grid.

The centre and states usually have a very stormy relationship. I would want to draw attention to the different aspects of this relationship. We live in a federal structure of government with three levels; centre, state and the panchayati raj institutions.