-Governance Now A CAG report dated March 15, 2013 had found Uttarakhand sitting on a time bomb, with nearly zero disaster preparedness back in Sept 2012 when the nationwide performance audit was done. Will other states, marked equally poorly in the audit, sit up and smell the coffee? The massive disaster in Uttarakhand has brought to the fore not only the old debate of ecology versus development but also thrown up...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Over 40 people were taken ill after consuming contaminated water, supplied by Delhi Jal Board, on the NCERT campus near Hauz Khas on Tuesday. While some of those affected are under treatment at various city hospitals including Safdarjung, Rockland and Saket City Hospital in South Delhi, two persons including a four-year-old child allegedly died in the area following complication arising out of drinking unclean water this past Sunday. However,...

-The Hindu While the focus is on pilgrims, nobody is talking about the fate of boys and men who came from their villages in the Mandakini valley to earn during the yatri season It is one week since Uttarakhand's worst disaster in living memory. Flash floods resulting from extremely intense rainfall swept away mountainsides, villages and towns, thousands of people, animals, agricultural fields, irrigation canals, domestic water sources, dams, roads, bridges, and...

-The Economic Times Anshu Prakash is worried about what he calls "mischievous propaganda" by "some people" who he thinks are misleading reporters. The joint secretary at the ministry of health and family welfare starts off by flatly denying that the joint monitoring mission (JMM) set up by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the government of India (GoI) discussed the impending danger of a TB drugs stock-out in August 2012. "There was...

-PTI Even as floods play havoc in Uttarakhand, several states have opposed the provisions of a 38-year-old Model Flood Bill aimed at minimising losses to life and property in the natural calamity. The Bill, prepared by the Central Water Commission in 1975, will empower authorities to remove dwellings from flood-prone areas. States such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have opposed the draft Bill, saying rehabilitation of people who will be displaced...