Feature Article

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is vital to reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, potentially providing 20% of the needed reductions in global emissions. Research and demonstration projects are important to increase scientific understanding of CCS, and making processes and results widely available helps to reduce public concerns, which may otherwise block this technology. The Otway Project has provided verification of the underlying science of CO2 storage in a depleted gas field, and shows that the support of all stakeholders can be earned and retained.

Refusing to be deterred by the biting cold, the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) and Jobat dam-affected adivasi oustees

In India, disaster response preparedness still means rebuilding what has been destroyed. In China, disaster response is an opportunity not only to rebuild, but also to develop the affected areas and communities.

This analysis of the Government of India’s National Policy on Biofuels argues that while the policy of ethanol blending in petrol is in the right direction, it is fraught with several problems which are rendering the approach ineffective. The most critical ones are the lack of sugar cane for producing ethanol and the policy on pricing of it.

An assessment of the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union’s struggles against the Suzuki management in Manesar (Gurgaon) reveals that like central trade unions, plant unions also tend to reproduce a form of bureaucratic functioning. This results in a split between leaders and the rank and file – a tendency which often leads to the betrayal of the interests of the struggling workers.

The debate on the design of the Lokpal has been premised on the questionable assumption that what is needed to combat corruption is a powerful national institution to prosecute and convict the corrupt, but the debate has not drawn on the experience with the existing institutional models, namely the Lokayuktas in the states. An empirical analysis of the performance of the Lokayukta in Karnataka between 1995 and 2011 suggests that any anti-corruption agency, no matter how powerful, that is oriented towards criminal conviction is bound to fail in the absence of judicial reforms.

Graft is a major issue in people’s lives, but it is unlikely to figure in voter choice in the assembly elections. (Editorial)

A study of the socio-economic situations of three villages in north-eastern Andhra Pradesh shows that while times and values have vastly changed, not much has been transformed in terms of privileges and opportunities. Those belonging to landowning families have managed to get a good education and secure good jobs or set up businesses. But those from the landless or marginal landowning families and communities have been left far behind. The government’s schemes and promises have more often than not yielded very little.