Gujarat Pollution Control Board: Latest annual report
GPCB's Annual report 2008-09
GPCB's Annual report 2008-09
This report was prepared in the context of OECD Programme of Environmental Co-operation with Asia and the OECD work on environmental compliance and enforcement in non-member countries.
Research paper (by U. Sankar) supported in part by World Bank under the India: Environmental management Capacity Building Technical Assistance Project.
A report by World Bank in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). It highlights the importance for strengthening institutions for environment management in sustaining and accelerating India's growth performance.
It was in early 2008 that my colleagues at the Centre for Science and Environment had tested household paints for lead content. The issue was not new. Lead in paints had been widely indicted across the world for being a silent poison—particularly when used on walls and items that children would lick or chew.
The 2009 Southwest monsoon has finally arrived in many parts of the country—with a vengeance in several places—leading to flash floods and loss of lives. With images of rain and news of reservoirs getting filled up pouring down TV sets, our macro-economists are seemingly clueless about the damage the delayed and deficient monsoon will cause. Agriculture plays a marginal role in the nation’s gdp numbers and so, even if the crops fail, it will not make a dent in the growth rate, they say.
If it’s broken, don’t fix it. That’s the new motto of the government: forget it and build another. Do not sort out details. I am talking of what the government believes will form the spine of regulation in future. The flavour of the day is ‘authorities’: separate, independent institutions not bound by departmental morass, not tied down by procedures or personnel—the bane supposedly of any implementation or regulatory initiative. I think it is time to review this gelato of current governance.
Last fortnight, we began discussing ‘authorities’, and asked: Is this variant of governance reform working? This time, let’s consider the Food Safety and Standards Authority (fssa). It was created because of a recommendation of the Joint Parliamentary Committee which investigated our report on pesticide content in soft drinks and the lack of standards to regulate contamination in food.
Let me be straight: As the clock ticks to Copenhagen, how low is the world prepared to prostrate to get climate-renegade US on board? Is a bad deal in Copenhagen better than no deal?
Jindal Steel and Power Ltd. (JSPL) is planning to set up a thermal power plant in village Dongamahua, located in Raigarh district of Chattisgarh. On behalf of the local community there, two activists (from Ekta Parishad and Jan Chetna) requested the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, to technically evaluate the Rapid Environment Impact Assessment done for the project.
CSE was invited to present its findings of the mining sector in India before the Group of Ministers.
This evaluation has very clearly identified operational difficulties and addressed fresh safety concerns. In view of the cursory attention paid to inspection and safety norms, experts have made several recommendations that include: improving the institutional framework for coordinated action, firming up inspection requirements to ensure compliance with safety regulations, and training needs for capacity building. The experts’ study argues for institutional arrangements being put in place to mitigate current safety problems — as well as those that may arise in the future.
I first learnt about slapp when we released a study about pesticides in colas. PepsiCo had filed a defamation case against us in the Delhi High Court and our lawyer, fresh out of law school in Bangalore, jumped as he read through the company’s petition saying this was a classic slapp case. We were bemused, knowing nothing about such legal intricacies. slapp, he explained, was an acronym in the us for ‘strategic lawsuits against public participation’.
The agriculture minister told parliament last week that 100,000 farmers had committed suicide from 1998 to 2003, a period for which his government had data. This means 45 farmers killed themselves each day across the country. There is now information that suicides may be on the increase. In the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, unconfirmed reports talk about three suicides a day among cotton farmers, up from one a day a few years ago. But the matter goes beyond statistics.
Railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav and former cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu are the clowns of Indian politics. But think of the actions of the two in the past fortnight and you will begin seeing the difference. Sidhu led the protest for the Bharatiya Janata Party against the fuel price hike by riding an elephant. Effective but clearly stupid. Do excuse my intemperate language but the gall of the politicians to believe we are myopic and their complete lack of leadership in this time of crisis makes me mad.