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New Delhi: Apartheid city
There are chilling parallels between the building of the ‘new’ Delhi by Edward Lutyens exactly 100 years ago and the construction of the global city today. Then as now, the men and women who actually built this increasingly segregated and fissured city have no place in it More... Five years after SEZs: Chronicle of revenues forgoneSEZs, touted as the silver bullet for India’s economic ambitions, appear to have lost their sheen as the Direct Tax Code threatens to withdraw the exemptions offered them. We have only just begun to realise how many thousands of crores of revenue have been forgone due to tax holidays granted to SEZs, says Manshi Asher, who secured some revealing statistics on this subject after invoking the RTI law More... Renewable energies as big business opportunities?Biomass and biogas are the cheap, decentralised renewable energies to choose for India. But the ministry of renewable energies -- and the technocrats and entrepreneurs surrounding it -- appear to favour hi-tech solutions such as grid solar power, with only a few exceptions such as the project to produce power from rice husk in 10,000 villages in eastern India More... Why public toilets get cloggedThe best-designed plans for the building and maintenance of public toilets in India seem to come undone. But the argument that the pay-per-use model popularised by Sulabh is the only workable one is superficial and unrealistic in a country where millions are denied their right to basic services like clean water and sanitation, says Kalpana Sharma More... Seed Bill II: Big business zindabad!A slightly altered version of the Seed Bill 2004, likely to be introduced in the ongoing winter session of Parliament, is ostensibly about keeping a check on seed quality. In fact, it will protect the interests of big business, keeping farmers’ seeds out of the market and discouraging small seed dealers and producers More... Hot potatoes from Farmer ObamaUS President Barack Obama’s farm mission has been a very important part of his India visit. But does the new India-US Agriculture Dialogue seek to provide food security and fair trade or to push USA's National Export Initiative, asks Rahul Goswami More... Extreme action from green campaignsFrom B Corp certification for environment-friendly businesses to baby carrot vending machines exhorting school children to ‘eat ‘em like junk food’, hundreds of innovative campaigns across the world are getting the message of social and environmental well-being across, says Darryl D’Monte More... Why temperance will not work with the AFSPAThere are only two ways to proceed with the controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, says Supreme Court lawyer Rakesh Shukla: retain it or scrap it. Tempering it with pleas to refrain from ‘excessive use of force’ etc will simply not work with an army trained to inflict maximum damage More... Conflicting interests: After FIFA and the Commonwealth GamesThe questions being asked in South Africa after the FIFA World Cup are similar to those raised in India before, during and after the Commonwealth Games. Who really benefits from these mega events? The people or only the contractors? Transparency International states that public works and construction are the most corrupt sector in the world, says Kalpana Sharma More... 700,000 republicsJohn Samuel on Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of local self-government, and how far panchayati raj in India still has to go to realise that vision More... Doing the dirty work of a globalised economy?The globalised economy of conspicuous consumption requires the outsourcing of domestic labour to migrant women – the Thai, Filipina and Ethiopian migrant in Europe, the tribal in India. Low wages and exploitative conditions are recognised problems, but what about the ethics of passing domestic work ‘down’ to another oppressed category? More... Impact of industrial expansion on water availabilityDemand for water from the domestic sector is expected to rise from 25 billion m3 to 52 billion m3 over the next 20 years. However, water consumption in the industrial sector is rising at 4.2% per year, and will shoot from 67 billion m3 to 228 billion m3 by 2025. State governments such as Orissa’s, which are signing MoU after MoU with industry, citing a surplus water situation in their state, need to think of the consequences of this industrial overdrive on availability of water in the future More... The wrongs and rights of ‘watsan’Why has it taken so many years for the UN to pass a resolution on water and sanitation as a human right? Why did countries like the US, UK and Canada oppose such a resolution, leaving it to Bolivia, which has experienced the negative impact of privatisation of water, to propose the resolution and the poorest nations to support it? More... Public transport vs personalised transportThe JNNURM initiative, under which the central government funds a substantial part of the costs of city public transport systems, has begun to show some results. The most talked about examples are the Bus Rapid Transport System in Ahmedabad and the public-private partnership in Indore, writes Kalpana Sharma More... The Wild West of stem cell proceduresFrom street-side stem cell clinics promising the wheelchair-confined that they will walk to corporate cord blood banks that offer to store your baby’s umbilical cord blood, an unethical and unregulated industry in stem cell procedures is feeding off the desperation of Indian patients. A comprehensive regulatory structure is urgently needed, writes Sandhya Srinivasan More... |
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