Meluha, Sivakalai and the Missing Gangetic Civilization

This conservative Chennai firm got a massive valuation for an untested but attractive waste processing technology and investment of USD 4 billion. Their indigenously developed technology is able to process different forms of waste into a variety of outputs that can then be used or disposed off with no resultant pollution. Till now India’s garbage management has failed primarily due to the bad attitude of urban and state government authorities. Times are changing, let us hope government authorities are willing to work with such innovative technology providers.

Scientists took a few genes from stem cells, tweaked them a bit, and they were able to design Pac-Man like micro-robots that could also coordinate with each other. Now they find that these microscopic organisms can also reproduce. How stupid can humanity get! 

Underground - below the trees and the undergrowth in forests and elsewhere lies a network of lifeforms that few know about. This network of fungi provides information and nutrition to the trees and themselves that scientists are only now beginning to understand. ‘Soil is the second biggest carbon sink in the world, after oceans. It stores CO2 through the mycorrhizal fungi that lace through the roots of plants, providing nutrients while drawing down the atmosphere-warming gas…’

Perhaps fed up by the lack of enough resource allocation towards garbage management, the UNDP has decided to provide its own funds to India to get its garbage management in order. Hundred odd cities are expected to benefit from this fund infusion. What about the remaining 8000 cities in India and another 10 odd thousand city-sized villages? The government needs to collect more funds – higher property taxes and energy taxes, are only two of many possibilities.

Air pollution is not falling down to western or WHO recommended levels in the next 20-30 years in urban India. Between natural and road dust, construction activity, rising use of motorized vehicles, and agricultural chemicals use and their gas release, etc., we will live with at best PM2.5 100-200 SPM for the bulk of the year. Therefore, the need for a mask that adjusts to the type of pollution; thankfully one such mask is about to be launched.