-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...
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Nature avenges its exploitation-Maharaj K Pandit
-The Hindu The catastrophe in the Himalaya is the result of deforestation, unchecked construction of dwellings and large-scale building of big dams A week is a long time in the Himalaya. In the late 1980s, I visited Arunachal Pradesh as a young researcher, with a keen interest in photography. I walked into the middle of the Dibang river, hop skipping over boulders, until my local tribal guide ordered me to return immediately....
More »Disaster management is a disaster -Anil Joshi
-The Times of India We have a PM-led National Disaster Management Board. But the latest CAG report says none of its plans seem to have worked since its inception. The question is not what the CAG report says and who leads the board's policies. To me, at least boards like these should have the experience of the community. Such boards are led by experts who have never experienced any disasters. That...
More »Audit to nab sapling killers -Bibhuti Barik
-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: The forests and environment department has started a plantation audit to find out the survival rate of saplings planted over the years within the city limits. A total of 9,67,362 saplings were planted in past three years but no one knows the survival rate of the saplings. Forest officials say a survival rate of 70 to 75 per cent is a healthy sign for any plantation drive. But the numbers...
More »More mines, fewer schools in former Maoist stronghold-Anumeha Yadav
-The Hindu Manoharpur (Jharkhand): Deep inside the Saranda sal forest, Thalkobad lies at the core of what was a CPI (Maoist) "liberated zone" in Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district along the Odisha border. Thalkobad, along with 24 other villages, was reclaimed by the Indian state after a massive military operation - Operation Anaconda-I in August 2011 to destroy the CPI (Maoist) Eastern Regional Bureau and several training camps inside Saranda. The village...
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