Reports

There’s a silver lining around that dark cloud called “energy crisis”. Karnataka is performing well on the renewable energy front. In fact, it is outperforming most other states, and exceeding its own targets too in the bargain. Karnataka achieved 122 per cent of its target and was fourth among the seven states that achieved its renewable purchase obligation (RPO, in short) target. In all, 22 out of 29 states failed to meet their RPO targets which lead to loss of more than 25 per cent...

The bullying tactics employed by the US in ensuring that it rules the patents regime and therefore the world, is backfiring badly on itself. US companies, in fact, are losing the race even in the US where foreign companies have forged ahead in registering patents. A recent study conducted by infojustice.org has found that many if not most firms in IP-intensive industries are foreign-owned. This runs contrary to popular belief and the belief of policymakers. The conclusion of the researchers is...

You would have had an inkling about this — office rentals in the city's Central Business District (CBD) are not just high, the rates have made pushed the district to the fifth spot for largest rental growth in Asia. Office rentals in CBD have grown by 8 per cent in the last one year, and annually cost USD 35 per sq ft to a company seeking office space. The only areas with a higher growth rate are Indonesian capital Jakarta's CBD with 46 per cent, New Delhi's Connaught Place 25 per cent, Chennai...

Karnataka is the second most dangerous zone for the leopard, the distant cousin of the coveted tiger that is now being increasingly targeted by poachers across India. The Uttarakhand-Uttar Pradesh zone is the biggest source for leopard parts and skins, while Delhi is the epicentre of the illegal wildlife trade, according to a just-released TRAFFIC study “Illuminating the Blind Spot: A study on illegal trade in leopard parts in India”. Karnataka, incidentally, has one of the biggest number of...

Soon enough, the leopard might become as endangered as the tiger is. Four leopards have been poached and their body parts entered into illegal wildlife trade every week for 10 years in India. If the trend is unchecked, the leopard too may be pushed to the brink of extinction. And, the leopard is arguably paying a collateral damage for its more precious cousin, the tiger. As of now, almost 90 per cent of leopard seizures are that of skins. One of the reasons for the selective targeting of...

An appraisal panel of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has virtually thrown the Madhav Gadgil Committee report on the Western Ghats out of the window. The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the ministry has favoured environmental clearance for the contentious 200MW Gundia Hydroelectric Power Project in Hassan and Dakshina Kannada districts. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), which had been asked to specifically look into the Gundia project apart from its widely-known...

The Centre has at last formed a high-level group which is to look into the report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), which had stirred a hornet’s nest with its stringent sets of measures that were to protect the ecologically fragile Western Ghats. The nine-member group, which is to be headed by Planning Commission member K Kasturirangan, is loaded with experts who have had little or nothing to do with the Western Ghats. The group formed by the ministry of environment and forests...

The age of the sublime as far as projects in Karnataka are concerned is long over—it’s the age of the ridiculous now. The contractor for a mini-hydel project in the ecologically-sensitive Western Ghats has already started constructing the dam on one side of the river even though land on the other side has not yet been acquired. The project in question is the 12.5 MW Sahasralingeshwara (Nekkiladi) project on the Kumaradhara river in Dakshin Kannada district. The Nekkiladi minihydel project, on...

The Western Ghats have finally been granted UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) status. The tag came late on Sunday at the 36th session of the World Heritage Committee (WHC) which is meeting in St Petersburg in Russia. Altogether 39 sites that dot the Western Ghats landscape will be part of the region that has been designated as WHS. The WHC decision reportedly came after intense lobbying by the Indian government. The Western Ghats almost did not make it to the WHS list after the International...

The Karnataka mining scandal provides a useful case study of the broader problems affecting India’s mining sector as it juxtaposes astonishingly serious regulatory failures with a relatively high level of capacity on the part of state governments. The assertion has been made in a 70-page damning report - Out of Control: Mining, Regulatory Failure, and Human Rights in India, released by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday. It said, “The mining scandals in Karnataka reveal the...