-The Hindu The Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed a public interest litigation petition seeking a direction to the Centre to allot the entire 2000 MW to be generated by the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project to Tamil Nadu. In its order, the First Bench comprising the Chief Justice M.Y.Eqbal and Justice T.S.Sivagnanam said the petitioner had not even made any representation to the authorities concerned regarding the matter. It was a policy...

-The Hindu   To provide water supply, drainage, solid waste management and street lighting  If a rural area boasts a high population — well above 5,000, sometimes as high as 20,000 — with most of its workforce in non-farm jobs, is it a village or a town? For almost 4,000 such areas, the definition is unclear: the census calls them towns, but since they have gram panchayats rather than municipal corporations, the government...

-The Times of India   Missile man APJ Abdul Kalam's vision of bridging the urban-rural divide through a new scheme is set to take off, with the Planning Commission agreeing to allocate Rs 1,500 crore in the 12th five-year plan and the Centre likely to start 15 projects this year.  The Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA) would target development in 'census towns' by undertaking key activities like sanitation, water supply,...

Bihar, which was synonymous with poverty, has emerged as the fastest growing state for the second year running, clocking a scorching 13.1% growth in 2011-12. Not just that, on the back of four years of double-digit growth, its economy is now bigger than that of Punjab—until recently the preferred destination of Bihari migrant workers. Among the top five states, Bihar is followed by Delhi and Puducherry. Mineral-rich Chhattisgarh, which many had...

-The Business Standard Planning for deficient monsoon must begin Now that the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has endorsed the fears expressed earlier by foreign weather bureaux about the emergence of the monsoon-unfriendly El Nino in the second half of the season, the government should begin preparing right away for mitigating its adverse impacts on agriculture, water reservoirs and other areas. El Nino, an anomalous rise in sea surface temperature off the...