DNA

Five years is a long time in the Internet space. The last five years, certainly, has been. And so has it been for the Centre for Internet and Society that completes five years here. When a group of concerned citizens got together to come under a platform called CIS five years ago, they had wanted to work on policy issues about the Internet that had a bearing on society. They, in fact, still too; except that the new media space itself has undergone a metamorphosis. Five years ago social media was...

There’s a silver lining around that dark cloud called “energy crisis”. Karnataka is performing well on the renewable energy front. In fact, it is outperforming most other states, and exceeding its own targets too in the bargain. Karnataka achieved 122 per cent of its target and was fourth among the seven states that achieved its renewable purchase obligation (RPO, in short) target. In all, 22 out of 29 states failed to meet their RPO targets which lead to loss of more than 25 per cent...

It is not often that conservationists, during times when pursuit of a frenzied double-digit growth is a national obsession, find something to cheer about. The Supreme Court order of Monday asking Gujarat to translocate Asiatic lions to Madhya Pradesh will come across as something that happens once in a blue moon. For those wildlife conservationists campaigning for the process, this is good news indeed. The apex court felt that the lions should have a second home especially if an epidemic or...

If one were to go just by the sheer numbers documented in the annual Amnesty International report on death penalty that was released last week, prima facie it would seem there is not much to write about India. Prima facie, of course. After all, on the face of it, the big numbers of 2012 are mostly about other countries: Only 21 of the world’s countries were recorded as having carried out executions in 2012 – the same number as in 2011, but down from 28 countries a decade earlier in 2003. In 2012...

The bullying tactics employed by the US in ensuring that it rules the patents regime and therefore the world, is backfiring badly on itself. US companies, in fact, are losing the race even in the US where foreign companies have forged ahead in registering patents. A recent study conducted by infojustice.org has found that many if not most firms in IP-intensive industries are foreign-owned. This runs contrary to popular belief and the belief of policymakers. The conclusion of the researchers is...

You would have had an inkling about this — office rentals in the city's Central Business District (CBD) are not just high, the rates have made pushed the district to the fifth spot for largest rental growth in Asia. Office rentals in CBD have grown by 8 per cent in the last one year, and annually cost USD 35 per sq ft to a company seeking office space. The only areas with a higher growth rate are Indonesian capital Jakarta's CBD with 46 per cent, New Delhi's Connaught Place 25 per cent, Chennai...

In 1997, the largest and most powerful insurgent group of the Northeast signed a suspension of operations agreement with the Indian government. With the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) (NSCN-IM) agreeing to come to the negotiating table, many saw it as the beginning of the end for conflict in the region. They had reasons to believe so. For one, it was the NSCN(IM) which held sway over the many other smaller militant-secessionist groups of the region, which it had willy-nilly...

Soon enough, the leopard might become as endangered as the tiger is. Four leopards have been poached and their body parts entered into illegal wildlife trade every week for 10 years in India. If the trend is unchecked, the leopard too may be pushed to the brink of extinction. And, the leopard is arguably paying a collateral damage for its more precious cousin, the tiger. As of now, almost 90 per cent of leopard seizures are that of skins. One of the reasons for the selective targeting of...

Karnataka is the second most dangerous zone for the leopard, the distant cousin of the coveted tiger that is now being increasingly targeted by poachers across India. The Uttarakhand-Uttar Pradesh zone is the biggest source for leopard parts and skins, while Delhi is the epicentre of the illegal wildlife trade, according to a just-released TRAFFIC study “Illuminating the Blind Spot: A study on illegal trade in leopard parts in India”. Karnataka, incidentally, has one of the biggest number of...

An appraisal panel of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has virtually thrown the Madhav Gadgil Committee report on the Western Ghats out of the window. The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the ministry has favoured environmental clearance for the contentious 200MW Gundia Hydroelectric Power Project in Hassan and Dakshina Kannada districts. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), which had been asked to specifically look into the Gundia project apart from its widely-known...