DNA

The Centre has at last formed a high-level group which is to look into the report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), which had stirred a hornet’s nest with its stringent sets of measures that were to protect the ecologically fragile Western Ghats. The nine-member group, which is to be headed by Planning Commission member K Kasturirangan, is loaded with experts who have had little or nothing to do with the Western Ghats. The group formed by the ministry of environment and forests...

The genial, lanky man who opens the door to greet you hardly looks like one who should be in the thick of a controversy. But the report of a panel chaired by Madhav Gadgil is today at the centre of a heated debate — that originally hinged on the Western Ghats, but has since been enlarged. Gadgil, in a free-wheeling interview with Subir Ghosh, dwells at length on the Ghats and minces no words about the so-called schism between development and environment. DNA: The report of the Western Ghats...

India is one of the few countries where Amnesty International did not have a country office – except for an ephemeral period a few years back. The international human rights organisation has just launched operations in India, with a country office based out of Bangalore. Country Director Ananthapadmanabhan Guruswamy speaks to Subir Ghosh about the organisation’s immediate and not-so-immediate plans, the human rights situation in India, and of course Kashmir, Northeast and Vedanta – issues on...

The age of the sublime as far as projects in Karnataka are concerned is long over—it’s the age of the ridiculous now. The contractor for a mini-hydel project in the ecologically-sensitive Western Ghats has already started constructing the dam on one side of the river even though land on the other side has not yet been acquired. The project in question is the 12.5 MW Sahasralingeshwara (Nekkiladi) project on the Kumaradhara river in Dakshin Kannada district. The Nekkiladi minihydel project, on...

The Western Ghats have finally been granted UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) status. The tag came late on Sunday at the 36th session of the World Heritage Committee (WHC) which is meeting in St Petersburg in Russia. Altogether 39 sites that dot the Western Ghats landscape will be part of the region that has been designated as WHS. The WHC decision reportedly came after intense lobbying by the Indian government. The Western Ghats almost did not make it to the WHS list after the International...

The according of World Heritage Site (WHS) status to the Western Ghats will make the going tougher for the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). On one hand, the Indian government will be under obligation to maintain the ecological diversity and sanctity of the Ghats. And on the other, it will remain under pressure to dilute the recommendations of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) which has called for drastic measures to maintain the biodiversity of the region. With the last...

The Indian mining industry has spiraled out of control, and the government has miserably failed to regulate it. The scale of lawlessness in the multi-billion dollar industry is hard to assess, and the industry has not only fuelled corruption, but also wrecked havoc on both local communities as well as the environment. This overview of the mining industry comes from a 70-page damning report – Out of Control: Mining, Regulatory Failure, and Human Rights in India, released by New York-based Human...

The Karnataka mining scandal provides a useful case study of the broader problems affecting India’s mining sector as it juxtaposes astonishingly serious regulatory failures with a relatively high level of capacity on the part of state governments. The assertion has been made in a 70-page damning report - Out of Control: Mining, Regulatory Failure, and Human Rights in India, released by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday. It said, “The mining scandals in Karnataka reveal the...

The ire of hacktivist group Anonymous that was directed at the government over blocking of sites like vimeo.com and Pirate Bay may not have been justified - the ban on these sites, in fact, was not ordered by the Department of Telecommunications. In response to a RTI query made by the Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), the department replied, “As per available information no blocking instruction to block websites like Pirate-bay and Vimeo etc. has been issued by the Department of...

These days one scam is weirder than the previous one. But this one will take the cake—here we have a dam that, if implemented, will submerge the tail of another upstream mini-hydel project. The mini-hydel project in question is the 24MW Kukke Stage I project. Once commissioned, it will submerge the tail of an already operational 4.8 MW Hosamatha MHS (mini-hydel scheme) on the Kumaradhara river in Dakshin Kannada district. Authorities of the Hosamatha MHS have also submitted their opposition to...