The World Bank has approved a $220 million credit to support rebuilding efforts in areas affected by the devastating Kosi floods in Bihar. The Bihar Kosi Flood Recovery Project will finance flood recovery efforts through the reconstruction of about 100,000 houses, 90 bridges and 290 kilometres of rural roads, the World Bank said in a statement. It also aims to reduce future oriented risks by strengthening flood management capacity, restoring livelihoods...

KEY TRENDS   • Section 105 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which provides for excluding 13 Central legislation, including Land Acquisition (Mines) Act 1885, Atomic Energy Act, 1962, Railway Act 1989, National Highways Act 1956 and Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978, from its purview, has been amended for payment of compensation with rigours $ • The amendments have now...

A Central team, led by a senior official of the Union Agriculture Ministry, arrived in West Bengal on Wednesday and held a meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and three key Ministers and Departmental Secretaries before leaving for spot visits to the 11 districts declared drought-affected by the State government. Finance Minister Asim Kumar Dasgupta, who was also present at the meeting, told journalists at the Secretariat that the eight-member team...

Catastrophes like unprecedented floods in Pakistan and China and cloudburst in a desert region like Leh in Jammu and Kashmir are no longer rarities. With climate change being a reality, freakish weather-induced calamities are bound to become more frequent all over the world; India being no exception. Mechanisms, therefore, need to be put in place to minimise, if not wholly eliminate, the damage due to such events. Unusual floods in...

In some remote villages in India, which are most unlikely to pose as models of development, a quiet rejuvenation is taking place, with communities learning to adapt to the climate change reality of the country today. Everyone knows by now that one of the foremost signs of climate change for the country is the changing pattern of the monsoon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already forecast shorter yet...