-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 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 Times of India BARASAT: Mamata Banerjee has again failed Kamduni, where a college girl was gang-raped and brutally murdered on the night of June 7. Even 15 days after the crime, the CID has failed to file the chargesheet as promised by the chief minister when she visited the victim's family on June 17, ten days after the ghastly crime. Mamata's self-imposed deadline passed on Saturday. "We have the postmortem report...

-The Hindu There has been no public debate on the level of watch citizens can be put through, and on what the red lines should be while using intrusive mechanisms The tussle between government agencies' need for a better, faster and real-time interception, surveillance and monitoring mechanism through the Central Monitoring System (CMS), on the one hand, and demands by privacy, civil rights and free speech activists, for ensuring higher privacy for...

-The Hindustan Times If there is one defining collage of the ongoing monsoon mayhem in Uttarakhand, it's this: multi-storied concrete houses collapsing like a pack of cards into an angry, wild river and cars and lorries being tossed around in the swirling muddy waters, as if they were plastic toys. As I watched the unfolding drama on TV, I remembered what a green campaigner told me some years ago in Uttarkashi:...