Category: Interviews

G’nY. Every definition of the term disaster uses ‘natural’ and ‘man made’—from text books to the Disaster Management Act, 2005. However, disasters are said to have occurred only when there is a loss of human life and damage to property. We would not, for example, consider an earthquake in an uninhabited land to be a […]

G’nY. Could you tell us about the brief history of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and its international equivalence? D K Aswal : NPL was formed on January 4, 1947, and uniquely mandated to be the measurement standards laboratory of India. According to the core mandate, NPL’s role is to develop primary/national standards of the […]

G’nY. What are the highlights of IIOE-2? Is it a ‘time series’ experiment to see how the Indian Ocean is responding—were similar experiments conducted in IIOE-1? The major highlights of IIOE-2 are recognition of the need to advance the understanding of geologic, oceanic and atmospheric processes and their interactions in the Indian Ocean—to determine how […]

G’nY. Making roads out of plastic waste is an outstanding innovation. How did you get the idea? Shri Rajagopalan Vasudevan : Way back in 2001, a doctor was talking about the detrimental impact of plastic on TV. I was struck by the bizarreness of how animals were found to have died because of plastic. That […]

G’nY. The total fertility rate (TFR) as per the first 1992-93 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-I) was 3.4. It has gradually declined since. What do you think has happened? Dr Amitabh Kundu : TFR is defined as the total number of children born or likely to be born to a woman in her lifetime, given […]

G’nY.  Water scarcity across states affects the economy substantially. What measures should be taken at the policy and implementation level to curb the prevailing problems? Mihir Shah : Water is perhaps India’s single most important and most neglected problem. Nothing short of a paradigm shift in the way we have managed water since independence is […]

G’nY. The theme for this WED is ‘beat plastic pollution’. Although pertinent for countries like India, what is the core area of focus, littering or recycling?  Eric Solheim : The scourge of plastic pollution is a problem for every country in the world. Recently we found a plastic bag in the deepest depths of the […]

G’nY. Is it possible to reserve seats for women within the reservation categories already mandated by the Indian government? Kamla Bhasin : Yes. It is one of the proposals for a long time. Right from the beginning many people including political parties such as Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal have been saying that there should […]

G’nY. India shows that women’s participation in public domain is still very low. What do you think are the primary constraints? Ravi Verma : Domains or spaces are gendered. Public domains are considered ‘natural’ for men whereas women are expected to confine themselves to their ‘natural’ domains within the domestic and private spheres. Ironically however, […]

G’nY. After the breakthrough innovation of the ‘artificial glacier’, can you say that it has substantively changed the lives of the people in the region? Chewang Norphel: To assert how artificial glacier changed the lives of people qualitatively and quantitatively, I would like to cite an example of a village Nang in the east Leh […]