Feature Article

This paper examines the changes in poverty incidence and monthly per capita expenditure in India using the National Sample Survey’s unit record data of three rounds, 1993-94, 2004-05 and 2009-10. The changes in poverty and growth in MPCE have been measured for major socio-religious and economic groups in both rural and urban sectors. This is complemented by the decomposition of the change in the incidence of poverty into the growth and distribution components.

Girish Sant, a leading energy sector analyst and the coordinator of the Prayas Energy Group – a Pune-based voluntary organisation working on policy analysis and advocacy in the energy sector – died in New Delhi on 2 February after a cardiac arrest. A tribute by his colleagues.

A national workshop in Hyderabad deliberated on adivasi rights and the organisation of legal clinics, addressing the issues faced by the vulnerable communities among them.

Total sanitation cannot be achieved merely by allocating more funds. (Editorial)

The government’s paranoia about protests against large projects has gone out of all proportion. (Editorial)

The terrifying meltdowns and hydrogen explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in the days following 11 March 2011 made the importance of backup electricity generators painfully clear.

Ectothermic organisms are thought to be severely affected by global warming since their physiological performance is directly dependent on temperature. Latitudinal and temporal variations in mean temperatures force ectotherms to adapt to these complex environmental conditions. Studies investigating current patterns of thermal adaptation among populations of different latitudes allow a prediction of the potential impact of prospective increases in environmental temperatures on their fitness.

Fire has become an increasingly important disturbance event in south-western Amazonia. We conducted the first assessment of the ecological impacts of these wildfires in 2008, sampling forest structure and biodiversity along twelve 500 m transects in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, Acre, Brazil. Six transects were placed in unburned forests and six were in forests that burned during a series of forest fires that occurred from August to October 2005. Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) calculations, based on Landsat reflectance data, indicate that all transects were similar prior to the fires.