ANIKET ALAM In the last week of April, India announced a us $5.4 billion credit to African countries for developing their infrastructure and meeting other development goals. This five year package also included duty free imports from 50 Least Developed Countries, of which 34 are in Africa. The government also announced a grant of us $500 million to African
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
punjab has finally made cancer-registry compulsory in the state. Despite numerous scientific reports revealing the public health crisis in the state, the government had obstinately resisted any redress mechanism. The recent decision comes in the wake of two new scientific reports. One shows that pesticides are damaging genes of farmers who spray them, often leading to mutations and cancers.
PRADIP SAHA talks to DILIP CHERIAN, founder and consulting partner of image management firm Perfect Relations, about the clash between public relations and public interest
There is a political process to public policy. Does corporate lobbying go against that democratic norm?
as the Right to Information Act of 2005 (rti) celebrates its third anniversary, the Union government has decided to do a review study. Officials insist that the study is meant to review only the implementation of the act and to find whether rural areas have benefited from it. But activists suspect that it may actually end up diluting the act and protecting the babus (See page 22). Their suspicion is not entirely unfounded.
The old Exxon ditty,"Put a tiger in your tank', has been adopted by the World Bank. Reportedly prodded by its president, Robert Zoellick, the Bank will announce a new global initiative to save tigers. The
The Right to Environment was not initially guaranteed by the Constitution as a fundamental right. Indira Gandhi's otherwise infamous 42 nd Amendment made it a constitutional expectation (Article 48-A). After the emergency, the Supreme Court of India converted this expectation into a guaranteed "collective' right for all people in India as part of their
Look out of the window the next time you travel by road or by train anywhere in India. Hit a human settlement, and you will see, heaps of plastic coloured garbage apart, pools of dirty black water and drains that go nowhere. They go nowhere because we have forgotten a basic fact: if there are humans, there will be excreta. Indeed, we have also forgotten another truth about the so-called modern world: if there is water use, there will be waste. Roughly 80 per cent of the water that reaches households flows out as waste.
PRADIP SAHA talks to DILIP CHERIAN, founder and consulting partner of image management firm Perfect Relations, about the clash between public relations and public interest
The old Exxon ditty,"Put a tiger in your tank', has been adopted by the World Bank. Reportedly prodded by its president, Robert Zoellick, the Bank will announce a new global initiative to save tigers. The 
The Right to Environment was not initially guaranteed by the Constitution as a fundamental right. Indira Gandhi's otherwise infamous 42 nd Amendment made it a constitutional expectation (Article 48-A). After the emergency, the Supreme Court of India converted this expectation into a guaranteed "collective' right for all people in India as part of their 
