The latest report says the forest cover is around 20 per cent of the land in the country, 3 per cent less than the area under the forest departments. But the report does not make a distinction between tree cover, commercial plantations and natural forest cover. To qualify as "forest cover", the Forest Survey of India considers 10 per cent tree canopy area and one hectare. So, if a householder has, say, a hectare of coconut palm, his land would qualify as forest cover.
The latest to take up the matter and join issue with the ministry is none other than Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who sent a message from Kolkata to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week, asking him not to allow a proposal to serve biscuits and pre-packaged food to pre-school children. Sen also asked the PM to prevent the move to replace cooked food with packaged food as part of the mid-day meal scheme in elementary schools.
The prime minister of India is over 75 and the man driving the nation's Metro revolution, E Sreedharan, is 75. It seems the world is destined to be eternally young.
Sadly, in India, wages for artisans never take into account their specialised skills.
Days after he died on January 6, Sethi's legacy is being questioned by the very NGO which is today known for taking the Jaipur foot to the masses. The invention won the doctor a Magsaysay award, which in turn has given him enemies.
The protests are meant to highlight the plight of the hundreds of sharecroppers of Singur besides the 12,000 landowners whose land was acquired by the Bengal government for the Tata factory which is to make the small car.
Passports or satellite images are two documents among options for tribals to produce as proof to avail of any entitlements under the ST and Traditional Forest Dwellers Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2007.
Clean development mechanism (CDM) should be used to make the prices affordable for the poor.
These are the Zipp money centres which are being introduced for the first time in the country by the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC), a forum formed in 1997 and which has inclusive banking interventions as one of its key projects. The money centres have already brought banking to the doorstep in many villages and far-flung areas in one district in Uganda where CBC started the project.
The main "culprit" for CO2 emissions is coal-based energy which has 24 per cent share in India's emissions and 41 per cent worldwide. While coal accounts for 25 per cent of energy, the role of renewables is 13 per cent. Of these, wind, solar and bio masses contribute just 4.1 per cent.
Ogilvy has signed on with the Madhya Pradesh sports department to pump up an awareness drive about the sports centres or the Grameen Yuva Kendras among the villagers. But, for Ogilvy, the drive stretches beyond the villages into the ears of the industry.
These schools bring literacy to women in a one-month course.
He rejected the recommendation of the report that "major emitters" in developing countries should aim at an emission trajectory that peaks in 2020 and leads to a 20 per cent cut by 2050.
The DEFRA project with MoEF is yet to identify a research institute in India and the bidding process is to start now, Coyne added. However some green groups in India look at this rush for climate change research in India as a ruse to promote technologies like genetic engineering.
The study commissioned by the Government of India and based on a sample of 2,000 households in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh says that employment rate among people with disability (PWD) fell from 42.7 per cent in 1991 down to 37.6 per cent in 2002.
Orissa, where the programme was already under a cloud after an NGO alleged false data were being entered on the state's NREGA website, is now uncovering more scams. A team of researchers led by economist Jean Dreze and Ritika Khera, which is doing a survey focussed mainly on the corruption in the programme in Orissa, recently dug out a doctored muster roll in Badhigam gram panchayat of Boudh district.
As part of its strategy to woo the villagers, not only has Posco CMD started taking lessons in the local Oriya language besides strolling into more peaceful villages, the company plans to tie up with an NGO which was started by Manibhai Desai a follower of Gandhi.
When the rest of the country is going in circles seeking health insurance for the society's most vulnerable, these slum-dwellers are part of a health security fund to which each person contributes Rs 60 annually.
Social entrepreneurship is a marriage between effective business techniques and social good. It is something that Mahatma Gandhi pioneered, Uday Khemka tells Business Standard.
About 50,000 to 100,000 people - representing associations of farmers, traders, hawkers, and even chemists from all over India - will converge on Mumbai's Azad Maidan to demand that big corporations quit the retail business.
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