Sustainable and resilient cities should be focus of urban development An international conference here on Wednesday called for making the Indian cities “resilient” in the backdrop of climate change and taking care of the urban poor. “The urban poor are the most vulnerable to current climate variability such as regular floods and water shortage. Sustainable and resilient cities should be the focus of urban development,” D.B. Raju, executive vice-president (special initiatives),...

State governments as well as Central agencies have opposed a proposal to use money from the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) for building community centres under the Union government’s flagship rural jobs guarantee programme. Officials said managing accounts for such a diversion would be difficult and could lead to the misuse of funds. A meeting of state government representatives and district collectors, meant to revise MPLADS guidelines to make...

What is life like at a water-strapped village, after its 15 minutes of fame? The hitherto nondescript Doba under Kudu block of Lohardaga district, with a population of less than 1,500, was thrust into flashbulbs during Wednesday’s high-profile visit of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor D. Subbarao, who came with a team comprising chief secretary A.K. Singh and senior officials of nationalised banks. Not surprisingly, a hasty whitewash preceded the celebrity...

Farmana, a village in Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's home district Rohtak, boasts of the cleanest toilets but its social indicators still reflect Haryana's feudal mindset. Its sex ratio is far below the state average. A Nirmal Gram awardee for "total Sanitation programme", and also holder of the Adarsh Gram status, Farmana has a sex ratio of 648 girls to 1,000 boys — one of the low sex ratios in...

An efficient delivery system is essential to keep up the achievements made by Kerala in the social sector over the decades, Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan said on Saturday. "Kerala has achieved remarkable growth in life index compared to many other Indian states. Now it is important that these achievements are maintained by improving the delivery system," he said, inaugurating an international conference on Reaching out to people: Achieving Millennium Development...