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India has done it again. Just when the world felt that this ancient country was making too many compromises with America’s corporate leaders and allowing American interests rampant entry into India’s markets and agriculture, its Environment Ministry has blocked commercial cultivation of the world’s first genetically engineered eggplant (brinjal). The ban is a tribute to […]
Much of the present revolt against the Government’s move to introduce genetically engineered brinjal would have been muted if a) the work had been carried out by our own agricultural scientists, and b) if Monsanto had not been in the background of the effort, like a sinister ghost. The green revolution which was set in […]
The Government of Goa has today become the single biggest thief of private and comunidade properties in the State. A recent case is the acquisition of land for the International Cricket Stadium, a pet project of Dayanand Narvekar and the Goa Cricket Association, to be located at Thivim. The acquisition involved two classes of land. […]
I attended the Gujarat consultation. Here is a brief note I wrote the same evening: The J.B. Auditorium belonging to the Ahmedabad Management Association has 500 fixed seats. There are two additional halls with video displays, each of 100 seats each. The third consultation saw 600 people in the main hall and the two video […]
I am here on behalf of the Organic Farming Association of India. Our business is sustainable farming. I have – in a fairly long life of 60 years – engaged myself in a wide variety of pursuits, from being a researcher to journalist, lecturer and publisher, environmental activist and book salesman. But the two human […]
Claude Alvares recounts how one of the country’s biggest Delhi based developers has obtained permissions for its project at Dabolim, subverting every public official in the administration (both State and Centre). This article appeared in two parts in the Herald, Goa. The latest offering of Goa’s landscape for sale is on billboards in Delhi. DLF […]
Hind Swaraj, Gandhi’s little book, completes one hundred years in 2009. The prognosis of civilization carried out in that book has been more or less on target. The last hundred years have been years of remarkable, if not sensational, violence, a feature associated by Gandhi with “satanic civilizations”. The book works itself out within two […]
(Key note address for a seminar on the subject at Carmel College held in November 2008) When I was first invited to asked deliver this keynote address, I declined. I asked the organisers to contact Dr. Nandakumar Kamat instead who is a better authority on the ecological traditions of Goa. For some reason, he was […]
The article ‘Rediscovering Indian civilisation’ by Hobson and Malhotra makes the point that if the East today cannot deny it has been transformed in many ways by the West, similarly, the modern identity of the West owes much to essential contributions from the East, including a good dose of mathematics. In fact, the development […]
It may be interesting and instructive to study the way in which Parra village in Bardez has drawn up its Regional Plan 2021. While most other villages have rejected the copy of the Draft RP2021 of their village sent to them by the BDO because of obvious errors, Parra decided to use the opportunity given […]