First food: business of taste
Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it
CSE
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Reining in rainwater wastage
10 years on To replenish groundwater level, Delhi Jal Board invites plans for rainwater harvesting. Struggling with depleting watertable and wasted rainwater, the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has been trying to raise awareness towards the benefits of catching and recycling rainwater for more than a decade. Now, to ensure that its efforts don’t get washed down the drain, the water utility is looking for experienced organisations to boost its campaign.
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Green plan awaits cabinet nod
In November 2012, when the city was in the throes of its worst smog spell in recent years, PM2.5 levels were consistently over 500 mg/cu m over several places. “Beijing undertook several measures to control its air pollution levels during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 but the city is still prone to smog. More recently, it has decided to implement a lottery system for private cars which it hopes will keep a check on the rising number of vehicles,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, associate director at the Centre for Science and Environment.
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Rashtriya Ispat gets sustainability award
The Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (Visakhapatnam steel plant) has received the CII-ITC sustainability award 2012. President Pranab Mukherjee presented the award to A.P Choudhary, the Chairman and Managing
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Thought Beijing air was bad? Delhi's no better
NEW DELHI: Beijing's air pollution made international news over the weekend when fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the city air rose to an 'out-of-index' level of 755 mg/cu m. Pictures showed Beijing residents wearing masks amid advisories that they should stay indoors. Meanwhile, it was business as usual in Delhi on Monday when despite a clear windy day, the PM2.5 levels ranged from 130 to 565 mg/cu m. According to World Health Organization, the safe level of PM2.5 is 20 mg/cu m. The Indian standard for this pollutant — that can cause respiratory illnesses and worsen heart ailments — is 60 mg/cu m.
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Protests and leadership
Every time people lose faith in the political establishment, urban middle classes embrace fascism and the poor take up arms against the state The last image of 2012 is that of protesters storming central Delhi, outraged at the brutal rape of a young girl and the culture of violence against women. This outburst by the educated middle class, many of them young women, was spontaneous as much as it was leaderless. But as we move into the next year, we need to think about the government’s response to this protest and other demonstrations. We need to understand if the Indian state has any clue about what is going on under its nose — and feet.
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Kudos for solo work & team effort
The National Institute of Open Schooling was an instant choice. The sheer scale of operations — NIOS gave 5 lakh out-of-school students the chance to get an education in 2011-12 — ensured its selection as a winner in the government category. If NIOS was about scale, Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya No.2 of Zeenat Mahal won admiration for the determination with which its turnaround was achieved. Facing shutdown at one point, this Urdu-medium school became one of the top performing government schools in Delhi. There was unanimity among the jury that NIOS and the Sarvodaya school deserved a joint award — if one was a shining example of macro intervention, the other showed what can be achieved with micro-level efforts.
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TOI Social Impact Awards: International contribution to India — Pratham
Inclusiveness, especially in education, rang out as a cause close to the hearts of the jury at the awards. And their selection of Pratham USA as the winner in the category of International Contribution to India seemed to confirm this. Through the three-hour deliberations, issues of inclusiveness kept cropping up with probing questions about the kind of interventions being made, the extent and scope of work being done, and the model's scalability. But when it came to the International Contribution category, the jury lost no time in choosing its favourite.
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CSE final recommendations on the draft policy document of JNNSM, Phase II
With regard to the draft policy document on JNNSM Phase II that was released by the ministry on its website, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) organised a roundtable discussion with stakeholders
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Solar power plants' output high, but varying widely
With no rain or dust, November was one of the better months for solar power plants in the country The ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) recently released data of power generation from solar plants constructed under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) for November. And the results span from very good to dismal. November means short days for the solar plants, but according to Vineet Mittal, managing director of Welspun Energy, a solar power developer: “November is one of the better months with no rain or dust and with lower temperatures, closer to the conditions they are made for, increasing output from the cells.”
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An ATM for clean water
The 'water ATM' can process 1,000 litres in an hour As dawn breaks, two queues start forming at the only petrol pump in Lakshmangarh, a small town in Rajasthan’s Alwar district. One, obviously, is of people waiting to get their vehicles’ fuel tanks refilled. The other is in front of a simple metal box mounted on the petrol pump’s boundary wall. People like to call it an ATM machine. But, instead of dispensing cash, it gives them clean drinking water.