 |
'Our life is about shaking people up': Sunita Narain
The director of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, which has shaken Indian consumers with its findings that 12 soft drink brands marketed by Coke and Pepsi have pesticide content 30 times higher than acceptable limits, lashes out at the double standards of global companies in the developing world and insists that confrontation is the only way to bring about change in this country More... 'We must have revised standards for pesticide use in food and water' : M S SwaminathanAs the M S Swaminathan Foundation turns 12, its founder-director Professor M S Swaminathan says that even before the term 'green revolution' was coined, he had warned that overexploitation of soil and water and overuse of pesticides would have terrible consequences More... What to do with our waste: the Sulabh solutionDr Bindeshwar Pathak is founder of the Sulabh Sanitation Movement, which has constructed over 650,000 toilet-cum-bath complexes and 62 excreta-based biogas plants in India. In this interview he explains how he brought the 'untouchable' subject of toilets and sanitation to the national agenda More... Truth, people and a video cameraActivist-filmmaker Shriprakash's honest, powerful documentaries attempt to capture the struggles and aspirations of local communities in Bihar and Jharkhand More... Sujata Gothoskar: Fighting for the invisible underclass93% of India's total workforce, which contributes 63% of the GDP, is employed in the informal sector. 96% of all women employed in the economy work in the informal sector, at low wages, long hours of work and no social security benefits. Sujata Gothoskar has spent decades working for the rights of women in the unorganised sector More... Two women and a flying squadShe used to use a sickle to cut the umbilical cord. Now she uses gloves, scissors and thread when she conducts a delivery. In her nine-yard sari and traditional nosering Sugandhabai and her co-worker Shantabai manage the local self-help groups, take the ecological message to hundreds of villagers as they march through the Western Ghats, fight the country liquor mafia and hold the local administration accountable More... Pakistan's fiery shame: Women die in stove deaths'Stove death' is the bitter expression used to refer to the fiery punishment meted out to wives in Pakistan. In Islamabad alone, 4,000 women are believed to have been set ablaze. Shehnaz Bokhari braves death threats to fight the practice More... Anand Karve: A new chapter in rural entrepreneurshipBy Juned Sheikh Dr Anand Karve, winner of the Ashden Award for Renewable Energy, has developed ways of harnessing agro-waste into fuel. Karve heads the Appropriate Rural Technology Institute which has developed pioneering seed and irrigation techniques to help farmers More... Barefoot, female and a solar engineerGulab Devi is illiterate, but she talks about circuits, transformers and condensers as other women talk about cooking and sewing. She is one of many barefoot solar engineers - mostly women -- working across eight states of India More... Shaheen Mistri: Helping children break the cycle of povertyShaheen Mistri is building a bridge between poor children living in slums and a broad range of institutions that cater primarily to middle class Indian children. In the process, she is creating new opportunities for poor children and helping middle class institutions and corporate houses combat high levels of illiteracy among the urban poor More... Nipun Mehta: 'Compassion is contagious'Operating on the voluntary strength of 1,800 members around the world, Nipun Mehta's CharityFocus empowers non-profit organisations with Web-based technological solutions. The idea is to help those who help others More... Ashok Khosla: Mini enterprise leads to macro changeAshok Khosla has spent decades developing and promoting environment-friendly and commercially viable technologies ranging from village power plants using agricultural waste as fuel to mini factories that recycle paper and local enterprises that make low-cost roofing tiles. The founder of Development Alternatives has been awarded the United Nations-Sasakawa Environment Prize for 2002 More... Kani tribals reap financial benefits from wonderdrug JeevaniIn a benefit-sharing biodiversity model that has made the UN sit up and take notice, the Kani tribals of Kerala share the benefits of the licensing fee and royalties on the sale of wonderdrug Jeevani derived from the 'magical' Aryogapacha plant. The man who has made this global benefit-sharing model possible is Dr P Pushpangadan More... Dr Lenin Raghuvanshi: Caste, not class, is at the root of bonded labourRealising that the problems of caste have to be tackled at the roots, Lenin Raghuvanshi has adopted four villages and one slum in which he is reactivating defunct primary schools, eradicating bonded labour, ensuring that girls get an education and that dalits have a minimum 50 per cent representation on village committees More... Beena Sheth Lashkari: Making invisible children visibleBeena Sheth Lashkari is designing continuous, rapid innovations to provide slum children their first exposure to education and to help them stay in school. From doorstep schools to schools-on-wheels to evening schools, Beena finds creative ways to make that first approach successful More... |
View articles by page |
| Microsites | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Newsletter |
|---|
| Syndicate |
|---|
 |