India's Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill represents capitulation to US and Indian corporate pressure, and a retreat from the state's responsibility to protect citizens against hazards.
Global finance is only one facet of multiple crises facing human civilization - crises over food, water, climate, energy as well as the global economy urgently need to be addressed. So far, neoliberal responses of governments have been to tackle finance alone - by replacing a banker or by pumping money into the system. But it is the system itself - that is in crisis.
In this special edition of Globalizations, François Houtart outlines the interlinked but different elements of the multiple crises we face, and makes radical suggestions for moving beyond the current state of affairs - through addressing all together.
The Mayapuri cobalt-60 episode shows Delhi University scientists were reprehensible and proves again that the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board is too inept, unreliable and compromised to perform its assigned functions. We need another agency.
Small farmers are being driven off their land in Maharashtra to make way for the Indian government's planned "nuclear park" - to be built by the French company AREVA. Yet, nuclear energy is notoriously slow, costly, inefficient and dangerous to develop, as demonstrated by a global decline in nuclear power that contradicts recent government enthusiasm.
The BP Gulf oil spill is not an anomaly but the result of industry-wide recklessness, as companies employ more and more risky methods to reach inaccessible reserves as the conventional ones run dry.
India's story starkly illustrates the disconnect between GDP and social progress, and the need for radically new economics developed from the bottom up.
As the Asia-Europe Summit gets ready to meet in early October, what are the implications of the rising power of Asia for progress on tackling poverty, inequality and climate change?
As the worlds new leading energy consumer, China's choice of energy strategy over the coming years will have defining implications for international relations and the fate of the environment.
Even with increases in energy efficiency, and despite the 45 percent who have no electricity connection - India's policy goal to quadruple energy consumption by 2032 represents a catestrophic GDP-ism focused on destructive models of development.
