With an aim to provide clean fuel to rural India, the finance ministry has approved the oil ministry’s proposal to provide extremely subsidized cooking gas connections to over seven million poor families in rural areas. The subsidy will be shared equally between the government and the state-run oil companies, which are expected to leverage their…
‘There was no question of making corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandatory,’ said Salman Khursheed, minister of corporate affairs, in an interview to Mint on October 9 while discussing the Companies Bill, 2009, that will soon be tabled before the parliament. ‘I think CSR is a way of doing business. It is not just setting aside…
A total of 116 roads in Himachal Pradesh were built violating Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. Moreover, the no-objection certificates (NOCs) to build the roads were issued by unauthorized persons like patwaris, range officers and block development officers (BDOs). The matter is now sub judice and the high court of Himachal Pradesh has directed the additional…
In the beginning of this month, Janaagraha, a Bengaluru-based non-profit organization, received a grant worth $3 million from a US-based philanthropic investment firm that had recently started operations in India. The funding will be used to upscale Janaagraha’s citizen engagement and urban governance model and also a national online civic-engagement platform, iJanaagraha. Part of it…
A recent research conducted jointly by experts at Stanford University and University of California has found that polluted air directly affects a gene that appears to increase the severity of asthma in children. The study was done on 181 children with and without asthma in the Californian cities Fresno and Palo Alto. The research report…
In a landmark turn of events that will very well amaze people across the world who have been following the Ayodhya verdict, Hindu and Muslim parties have come to a mutual understanding and decided to not build either a temple or a masjid at the disputed site. Although Allahabad High Court proportionally divided the land,…
It is difficult to believe that just by not wasting food the United States could immediately save the energy equivalent of that produced by about 350 million barrels of oil a year. US-based scientists Michael Webber and Amanda Cuellar note that food contains energy and requires energy to produce, process and transport. The study found…
The harmful pollutants emitted by an aircraft at an altitude of 35,000 feet are fatal for people, says a study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (EST). The report reads that almost 8,000 people will die due to aircraft pollutants this year, and nearly 3,500 of them will be from India and China….
A study by Harvard medical researchers, published in the October issue of Diabetes Care, links air pollution to increased rates of diabetes. The research says that even in areas where there are acceptable levels of air pollution, as regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the prevalence of diabetes is noteworthy, with an increased risk…
‘In the last few months, I have tried to set the ball rolling, so that by 2015, at least, we can have a system of green national accounting,’ Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh has said. The minister said this while delivering the 11th ISRO-JNCASR Satish Dhawan Memorial Lecture – ‘The…
