News stories by Ranjit Devraj, page 6

While the Fukushima tragedy has not deterred India from going ahead with building the world’s largest nuclear power facility at Jaitapur on the western coast, the government has announced a tighter safety regime for its ambitious nuclear power programme.

Will India, the world’s biggest manufacturer of the pesticide endosulfan, and also the biggest victim of the toxic pesticide, persist with opposing its ban globally?

As BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) leaders prepare for Thursday’s summit in the resort town of Sanya in China’s southern Hainan province, experts here say there are limits to how ‘political’ the grouping can get.

Seeing the bespectacled old man fasting in protest against corruption in the bustling heart of the Indian capital, many are reminded of Mahatma Gandhi, the man who used ‘moral power’ to lead India to independence from British colonial rule in 1947

The Fukushima disaster has prompted calls to review legislation passed by Indian parliament in August 2010 that capped compensation payable, in the event of a nuclear accident, at 320 million U.S. dollars.

As India prepares to seal a sweeping trade and investment deal with the European Union (EU) in April, civil society groups are campaigning to limit the deal’s repercussions within the local generic drug industry here upon which millions of people around the globe depend.

India cannot match rival China’s massive investments in Africa, but it is using its information technology capabilities and its affordable university courses to stay relevant on the continent.

Anti-nuclear campaigners in India see the earthquake that hit Japan last week, which threatens the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic power facility there, as a wakeup call for this country’s ambitious nuclear power programme.

India’s Supreme Court has questioned clearances to industries on the basis of environment impact assessments (EIAs) carried out by private consultants in the pay of project proponents.

Activists hope that a popular agitation against the setting up of a factory to manufacture asbestos products in the eastern Bihar state will result in a nationwide ban on the large-scale import into this country of the deadly mineral fibre.