The group plans Rs 30,000-cr oil refinery with IOC; buys Lanco's Udupi power plant for Rs 6,000 cr
'Once the military starts to draw up plans for using nuclear weapons, then nuclear weapons could be used earlier in a crisis than otherwise.'
Senior journalist Darryl D'Monte reports exclusively for Rediff.com from Paris.
Not only is Modi's India not the shining land of dynamism and prosperity that he promised -- though it may be that, for some people, in a few years from now -- but socially it has the positively regressive tendencies that were entirely predictable.
'No private citizen can be prevented from holding or propagating in India or abroad, a view contrary to that of the government of the day. The government, it seems is misreading the mandate in the Lok Sabha as being a mandate to crush dissent. In times when ruling parties have brute majorities in Parliament, the true test of safeguarding democracy is its ability to allow dissenting voices to be heard,' says Indira Jaising, the former additional solicitor general.
'The leak is likely to continue for some time before it becomes stable, but this is something that NPCIL, who is the plant operator, will have to do. For this, we have to plan very carefully.'
As oil minister, he has overseen India's petroleum and natural gas needs. But now he also runs the environment ministry, where he has issued permits for 100 stalled projects in a month-long spree that has delighted industry but shocked green activists.
We're behaving like frogs in warm water. We swim around untroubled, cooled by our faith in Indian liberal democracy. We are blind to the bubbles popping around us, the bubbles warning of fundamental changes, says Mihir S Sharma.
For the past, blame the Congress. For the present, blame the Congress. For everything, blame the Congress. But for your future, vote BJP.
Avid cyclists, newspaper vendors, milkmen and courier boys have come together to protest against West Bengal government's ban on cycles from city roads, reports Debaleena Sengupta.
Was Adani able to clinch this loan merely as a result of his proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi?
The omission of historical responsibilities, implying the build-up in the atmosphere of 165 years of greenhouse gas emissions from industrialised countries, is a body blow to the notion of climate justice, sums up Darryl D'Monte, reporting exclusively for Rediff.com from COP21.
When it came to dealing with the media and academia, it has been a roller coaster ride for the National Democratic Alliance, observes Nitin Sethi.
Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan welcomed the apex court's order and urged people to abide by the SC guidelines and 'give green Diwali and our environment a chance'
The average global temperature between January and October has been 0.68 degrees Celsius higher than the 20th century's average global temperature of 14.1 degree C.
'To suggest that activists -- and that too 'five star activists' -- are driving the courts, is to betray an ignorance of the functioning of the legal system of the most gross kind,' says Senior Advocate and former Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising.
'The government is using the Intelligence Bureau to go after NGOs.' 'It is not only the NDA, the UPA also didn't like NGOs.' 'NGOs predominantly work with the poor. So, when you cancel an NGO, the affected are the poor, the Dalits, the tribals, the street children and the marginalised.'
Meaningful devolution of spending power to states could spread more confidence on the ground and stir precisely the sort of change Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised.
GM is already in our food chain for years. The approval for indigenous GM mustard should put fake fear-mongering to rest, says Shekhar Gupta
'When the cause of the leak is identified, is the AERB going to order a shutdown of all the other pressurised heavy water reactors in the country to fix the underlying problem?'
Modi government is pushing GM food crops without adequate safety assessment and transparency, claim activists.
The work of Norman Borlaug, who helped save billions from starvation, is worth recalling, especially as opposition to gene-modified crops mount, says Shreekant Sambrani.
Back in September 2002, Shakti Bhatt/Rediff.com located the former Union Carbide chairman's luxury home in New York, declared unknown by the American and Indian governments. Rediff.com reproduces the feature about his life in hiding.
'Today, environment has become an issue of political debate. It has become a media issue. I think that is a good development.'
Once called India's garden city, this upper middle-class residential area in Bangalore has India's most toxic air, says Devanik Saha, IndiaSpend.com.
'If Modi arrived like a juggernaut, he left like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were being dismantled bit by bit. It was as if India had seceded quietly from him.' Shiv Viswanathan's social science fiction about what India would be like in 2020.
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