-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 Times of India NEW DELHI: Are you surprised by the staggering number of people, many from across India, who are stranded in calamity-stricken Uttarakhand? The reason is quite simple: in a state with a total population of just over 1 crore, the number of tourists visiting it is 2.5 crore, both figures being for 2011. And most of these tourists visit the mountain state in summer. Put this together with the...

-The Hindu In this time of adversity, while there are food, water and biscuits, there is also politics Dehradun: Uttarakhand is abuzz with helicopters whirring in the skies, Ministers from all over the country are chipping in with aid, money is flooding the Uttarakhand Disaster Management and Mitigation Centre. All this has happened this past week after massive rains and floods ravaged the Himalayan State. Politics too reared its ugly head in the...

-The Hindu Could the Uttarakhand tragedy have been avoided, or at least minimised? There is no simple answer. Environmentalists describe the death and damage as a man-made disaster while geologists say the extent of destruction could have been far lesser if stricter regulations had been put in place and the authorities equipped to deal with the situation. Importantly, the events focus attention on the debate on the December 18, 2012 notification of the...

-The Hindustan Times Kolkata: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday blamed the Mamata Banerjee government for not granting sanction for the prosecution of the state police and other state officials in the Nandigram police firing case during the CPI(M) regime in 2007. Taking exception to the CBI's report, Justices Ashim Kumar Banerjee and Mrinal Kanti Chaudhuri directed the state to submit an action taken report on CBI's plea for granting...