-PTI Till September 2011, only eight States have prepared EAP for 192 large dams Even as the Uttarakhand floods bring to the fore the debate over strength of dams, there are over 4,500 such structures in the country which are operating without an "emergency action plan" (EAP) rendering huge area and property vulnerable to cascading effects of dam failure. The Central Water Commission (CWC), which works under the Water Resources Ministry, had issued...

-The Hindustan Times The recent release of The Lancet's special edition on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Delhi provided an occasion to debate the relevance of its recommendations for India. The discourse was enlivened by a statement, released ahead of the event by several Indian health experts, challenging the content and intent of some of the suggested interventions. Three authors of The Lancet series and many of the critics who issued that statement...

-The Hindu Kochi: Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who recently received an award from the United Nations on behalf of the Chief Minister's office, was actually nominated for the award by his own government. The rules of nomination for the United Nations Public Service Award clearly state that self-nominations - "when the institution being nominated and the institution making the nomination are the same" - are not accepted. But the Chief Minister's staff...

-The Hindu     The journalist who first wrote the story with the ‘15,000 Gujarati pilgrims' claim says his source for the figure was Anil Baluni, the BJP's spokesperson in Haldwani in Uttarakhand. For three days running, there was no reaction from the Bharatiya Janata Party to reports that the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, had evacuated ‘15,000 Gujaratis' from Uttarakhand in the course of a two-day visit to the hill State. But with...

-The Hindu     2,400 stranded at Badrinath, doctors warn of epidemics in Kedarnath Dehradun: Residents of dozens of rain-affected villages across Uttarakhand are starving and ill. Villages such as Pilang in Uttarkashi, Lambgodi in the Kedar Valley and those in the Yamuna Valley in Garhwal division are among the worst affected. Famished residents of Munsyari, Sosa, Sirkha, Gungi and several other villages in the Kumaon division have urged President Pranab Mukherjee to order the...