-Hindustan Times The Chennai floods have thrown up some fundamental flaws in our system of urban Planning. Across India, city after city has experienced floods, while some others live with the fear of impending disasters. In Mumbai, flooding was caused by wrong developments at the Bandra estuary and negligence along the Mithi river, and in Uttarakhand the disaster was caused by unplanned regional development and the unholy nexus between the land...

-GovernanceNow.com A survey in drought-hit Bundelkhand paints a startling picture of farmers in distress Bundelkhand, the land of famous warriors Alha and Udal, is entrapped in an unending battle. But unlike 1857, today there is no ‘harbola’ to tell the stories of sacrifices. Then, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan wrote, “Bundele harbolon ke munh hamne suni kahani thi, khoob ladi mardani voh to Jhansi wali rani thi (from the mouths of storytellers of...

-DNA Indian municipalities can adopt the European Union model to achieve zero landfill disposal Budapest: Today, streets and corners littered with garbage are a common sight in almost every Indian city. What’s more, when municipalities actually pick up the trash, they dump it directly in landfills. Until a few months ago when I moved to Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, I thought this situation was inevitable. Then, I travelled to...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: One out of two adolescent girls suffers from anaemia in India, which has the world's largest adolescent population. Besides, 30% or one of every three young boy in the country is also anaemic, putting a large chunk of the country's young population at varied health risks, a latest assessment by the health ministry along with Unicef showed. The large prevalence of the disease assumes significance also...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: NITI Aayog, established as the government's think tank, could soon become Planning body for the Centre and states, similar to its predecessor — the erstwhile Planning Commission. However, the institution would adopt a bottom to top approach as it moves on from five year plans to longterm perspective Planning. This would keep it in sync with the government's focus on cooperative federalism. A senior government official told ET that...