-The Hindu Uttarakhand is still in dire need of a development plan that is also sensitive to the fragile ecosystem that was crippled by the floods and landslides of 2013 Santosh Naudiyal stood on the verandah of a building in Rudraprayag last December while he narrated his story. On October 1, 1994, the night of the Rampur Tiraha massacre, Santosh and his friends boarded a bus to New Delhi to participate in...
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A year after Uttarakhand floods, disregard for ecology continues -Chetan Chauhan
-The Hindustan Times In the din of elections and euphoria over new Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the loss of hundreds of lives in one of the worst Himalayan tragedies in Uttarakhand has been forgotten. The policy correction promised after the tragedy remained mostly on paper and Uttarakhand is back to business as usual - developing but doing little to save the fragile local ecology. The core of the promises made was to check...
More »Punjab farmers try religious route to shun pesticides -Alok Gupta
-Down to Earth Ask religious institutions to grow organic crops and accept organic crops as donation for langars In Pandori Ragsangh village in Amritsar, farmer leader Gurlal Singh takes a large sip of hot milk and asks fellow farmer, Jagdish Singh, about the "poison." "This year, there is too much of poison," Jagdish replies. It takes a while to understand that the farmers are discussing lethal pesticides used to grow wheat....
More »Global media body condemns soft censorship by governments -Rachna Burman
-The Times of India Attempt to muzzle newspapers by withdrawing advertising for critical news coverage A new report by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN) has strongly condemned "soft censorship" by governments and regulators as a "very serious threat to media independence and the very viability of media companies". WAN, which is the umbrella organization of newspapers representing more than 18,000 publications and 15,000 online sites in 120 countries...
More »Revisiting Drought-Prone Districts in India -B Venkateswarlu, BMK Raju, KV Rao, and CA Rama Rao
-Economic and Political Weekly The Drought-Prone Areas Programme and the Desert Development Programme launched by the Government of India during the 1970s used rainfall and irrigation as the two criteria to ameliorate the impact of drought in the targeted districts. This article revisits the eligibility criteria in light of the recent climatic classification and irrigation statistics. B Venkateswarlu (vbandi_1953@yahoo.com), B M K Raju, K V Rao and C A Rama Rao are...
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