Across the world, antibiotics are viewed as curative medicines — to be used only when truly necessary. In India, they tend to be used preventively, routinely prescribed for viral infections that the human body is fully capable of handling. I have travelled extensively over the past three decades and never [...]

Multi-use products, not the material they are made of, are the key The nationwide ban on single-use plastic products (SUPs) that started yesterday comes on the heels of a two-decade-long effort. The first attempt was made in 1999 with the ban on thin polythene bags. Since then, three national and [...]

Exactly three years back, single-use plastics (SUPs) took centre stage in India when PM Modi, on June 5, 2018, announced that the country would completely phase out these products by 2022. Now, barely a year before the deadline, the Union environment ministry has issued a draft notification to impose a [...]

An oft-repeated saying in India is that our environmental laws are good, but their implementation is poor. I have always disagreed with this simply because the primary reason for a law’s poor implementation lies in its flawed design. Most environmental laws in India are designed using a top-down approach, with [...]

India produces about 60 million tonnes of waste annually, of which only about 25 per cent is processed, and the rest is dumped or burned in open areas.

As I write this column, I am mindful that I may receive a legal notice from the Centre for Environment and Agrochemicals or the Crop Care Federation of India. These organisations, representing pesticides manufacturers and formulators, have been sending us legal notices for many years. We utter the word pesticides [...]

The Union government is giving final shape to the laws to regulate the labelling and advertisement of food products. In November 2017, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) issued the draft Food Safety and Standards (Advertisements and Claims) Regulations, 2017, for public comments. On January 5, 2018, [...]