Agriculture scientist Preeti Joshi has the recipe for the perfect compost and has been promoting it in Wardha district of Maharashtra for 20 years. She tells Aparna Pallavi why farmers fail to use it despite their eagerness to do so. Excerpts:
There I was, zipping down bustling Ahmedabad. The bus stopped at a station, designed so the doors of the bus and the station open simultaneously to let passengers out and in. People were walking to the station, buying tickets and waiting.
As I write this page, the Union minister for environment and forests is deliberating whether Bt brinjal can be grown and eaten in India. So, at the outset, let me make my own bias clear. I am not an anti-GM person; I have no ideological problems with the use of genetically modified technology to improve crop yield.
German architect Andre Alexander has been restoring old buildings in the Tibetan capital Lhasa for 15 years now. Over the past few years he has extended his work to Leh. Ravleen Kaur caught up with him over a cup of chhaang (barley wine) at a party where the artisans celebrated the last day of the work season before parting for the winter break. Excerpts:
A new decade. For me¤ three decades of work in environment. I wonder: have matters improved since the early 1980s¤ when I began? Or¤ are things worse off? Where do we go from here?
We know what the conference was supposed to agree upon: drastic emission reduction targets by industrialized countries and actions supported by finance and technology by emerging countries such as India.
This new short film highlights plight of the Maldives, one of the world's most vulnerable countries to sea level rise. Produced by TVEAP in collaboration with COM+ Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development, it is based on an exclusive interview with President Nasheed of Maldives.
THE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF THE SEA by O P Sharma, Oxford University Press, Rs 795 The law of the sea has undergone more changes in the last 60 years than in the past 100. This book deals with some of the changes.
US became a superpower and Argentina a basket case owes nothing to intricacies of geography, culture or religion. Countries become rich or poor because of the choices their rulers make. But what is so new about that? Why some countries thrive and others fail is a big question in economics. Beattie hops from country to country and across history for answers. In one chapter he visits
