Reports

At a time when more monuments and architectural sites in Karnataka are crying out for attention, the monetary allocation for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to maintain central protected monuments in the state has been curtailed. The funds allocation for 2012-13 will be Rs17.55 crore as against the Rs19.85 crore that had been earmarked in 2011-12, Union minister for culture and housing and urban poverty alleviation Kumari Selja announced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. The allocation for...

Indian smartphone users are way smarter than their American counterparts. And they are heavier users of social networking sites too. In spite of having less than 50% of users that the US has (245 million), Indian smartphone consumers use their gadgets more than US citizens. Fifty-six per cent of Indian smartphone users go online multiple times a day (more than thrice) compared to 53% in the US. In fact, 94% of Indians connect to the Internet at least once a day compared to 88 per cent of...

The new rules on e-waste that have come into effect from May 1 can be seen as the first step towards reducing pollution of the information era. The E-Waste (Management and Handling) Rule, 2011 were notified on May 30, 2011 by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF), which set May 1, 2012 as the date for implementation. What makes the notification far-reaching with its ‘extended producer responsibility’ principle is that it puts the onus on companies which would now be responsible...

It’s an old practice that seems to have made a comeback. The use of snares and traps to hunt wildlife had always been a conventional practice, one that had gradually given way to modern forms of poaching. But if numbers are anything to go by, these are emerging as a preferred form of catching wild animals in Karnataka. Over 80 traps and snares have been recovered or dismantled by the state forest department in Bandipur and Nagarhole national parks in the last three months. The forest department...

A resource-hungry industry has reasons to be perturbed about the possibility of the government accepting the recommendations of an expert panel which was constituted to look at the ecological status of the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), which has also called for a blanket ban in mining in most parts of the ecologically fragile region, has recommended that power plants being set up in the Western Ghats should be subject to strict environmental regulations and...

State governments across the country have been both callous and tardy in implementing the Forest Rights Act. Claims are being rejected on flimsy grounds, with the rejection rate in as many as 11 states being over 50%. Karnataka stands fourth in the rejection rate with 95.66%, according to a compilation released on Monday by the Delhi-based Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network (AITPN). As of January 31 this year, 31,68,478 claims have been received and 27,24,162 (85.98%) disposed of. In...

Conservation, till very recently, was so top-down and condescending in its approach that conservationists and social activists would forever be at each others’ throats. There was no clear winner and it was evident that it were both people local communities on one hand and wildlife and forests on the other that were losing out in this internecine battle. That top-down approach is being, to quite an extent, turned on its head by the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) which submitted to the...

A major social media campaign is building up seeking justice for a Manipuri student who died under suspicious circumstances last week. While the police have described the death as the fall-out of a two-wheeler accident he had met with two days earlier, friends of the victim insist that the 19-year-old Manipuri succumbed to injuries he suffered on being severely assaulted by seniors at college the previous night. Richard Loitam, a second semester student of the Acharya NRV School of Architecture...

Those clamouring for Special Economic Zones to be established in the Western Ghats are not going to like this. An expert panel which recently studied the ecological imbalance in the region has recommended that no SEZs should be set up in the region. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), which submitted a two-volume report on August 31, 2011, has listed out sectoral guidelines for conservation of the Western Ghats, reckoned to be a biodiversity hotspot. The Ministry of Environment and...

Unbridled tourism in the Western Ghats will be a thing of the past if the Union government accepts the recommendations of an expert panel that was formed to look into the environmental aspects of the ecologically-fragile region. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), which submitted a comprehensive report to the government in August 2011, has noted that some of the environmental footprints relate to the uncontrolled growth of tourist establishments in the Western Ghats leading to...