Picking up the Pieces at Dabhol as Enron Implodes

Enron effectively imploded on Wednesday, 28th November, with Dynegy refusing to go ahead with its proposed merger deal. Enron’s shares are now trading for only a few cents and Enron is now heading towards an … Read more

Power Sector Policies and the New Electricity Bill: From Crisis to Disaster

Draft Electricity Bill is in its nth avatar[i] and is now going through its final round of consultations before being placed in the Parliament. The salient features of the Bill – still called Draft Electricity … Read more

The Twisted Tale of Enron’s Equity

ENRON, without any intimation or notice to the government of India or Maharashtra, has obtained an ex parte injunction from the High Court of Justice in London on 10th October 2001. This injunction prohibits the … Read more

Hard Decisions Needed on Enron

THE Godbole committee, set up to examine Enron’s Dabhol Power Project, has clearly opined that power from this project was priced way beyond what was reasonable, and the decision-making process was neither “reasonable” nor “rational”. … Read more

Choice Before the Nation: Subsidise Enron or Nationalise Enron

As critics of Enron, we owe an apology to the nation for not bringing out the true nature of the Enron contract. Instead of Dhabol power costing Rs 4, and being a bad deal as … Read more

Hokkaido G8 Summit & Climate Change:G8 + O5 + MEM16 = 0

The best part of the G8 Summit that concluded on July 9 was the picture postcard setting of the mountain resort of Toyako (near Lake Toya hence Toya-ko) in Hokkaido, Japan. Those who expected the … Read more

USA 2, Rest Of The World 0 Bali Climate Conference

USA 2, Rest Of The World 0 Bali Climate Conference SO, yet another international conference on climate change, this time in the scenic Indonesian island of Bali, has come to an end without anything to … Read more

Last Chance To Save The Planet!

Last Chance To Save The Planet!  SO this is it! No more excuses, no ifs and buts, this is definitive. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the Report of its Third Working Group … Read more

The Killing Fields of Monsanto

More than 650 organisations – including Greenpeace and the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements – have recently filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States over the approval of … Read more

Social Movements and Development: Some Ideological Issues

The intrinsic nature of capitalism is to draw in an ever larger circle of formations within its scope. This produces serious conflicts over natural resources, particularly in land, and its consequent degradation. Much of the … Read more

Climate Change Treaty Concluded: Good News or Hot Air?

IN all the din made by US bombs in Afghanistan, and the media becoming almost single issue-focused, a major international event, namely the drawing-up of the first-ever multilateral treaty on environment, passed almost unnoticed. The … Read more

Kyoto Protocol Becomes Reality — Despite Rogue US

REGULAR readers of these columns will probably wonder why another article on the much-debated Kyoto Protocol is appearing in People’s Democracy so soon after the previous one on the “toxic Texan” US President George W … Read more