'Cong, TDP Trade Blows Rescued Andhra Pradesh Pilgrims'

By Swati Reddy / Dehradun

Congress leaders got into fisticuffs with Telugu Desam Party politicians on Wednesday over providing assistance to pilgrims from Andhra Pradesh stranded after floods in Uttarakhand. The leaders of both parties fought each other at the Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun.

Congress and TDP have already been engaged in war of words over relief operations in the rain-ravaged state but it finally came to blows.

Must Travel: 'Kasar Devi' - The 'Heaven' of Uttarakhand

#BloggerDreamTeam Kasar Devi a place to be termed as the heaven of Uttarakhand. The place to remember with its unique attraction, clean atmosphere, lonely places, natural beauty and moreover it has a charm to stay back in the vicinity. Hilly areas with a lush green, cloudy and dewed moody seasons makes us happy.

This was the first time over many years that I didn’t have a fixed travel plan for this month. Too many options, too many places to visit, too many things to see, to choose one amongst many is a tedious task in itself.

Banding Together, for Their Rights

Tribal women in Uttarakhand are standing up for their community rights, and resisting the dispossession of their lands by a nexus between powerful landlords and the government machinery. PUJA AWASTHI reports.

One morning the pond named Haldubala was gone. It had turned into a slushy farm. Not that the residents of Khempur village (near the city of Sitarganj in Udham Singh Nagar) hadn't noticed what had been going on. Sardar Jangir Singh, a powerful member of the local Rai Sikh community, had been, bit by bit, filling up the pond (named after the spice turmeric, haldi) with earth, emptying it of water and increasing the boundaries of his farm, a few feet at a time. "Every six months he would drop in a few drums of mud. We had ignored it", says Kalawati Singh, a Tharu tribal.

In the foothills of the Himalayas, land and natural resources are increasingly turning into bitter subjects of feuds. And Kalawati Singh and others are mindful of a major change all around them - the dispossession of tribal land by non-tribals. The biggest victims are always the lower castes and the tribals. All sorts of ruses are resorted to in this land grab - offering tribals loans in lieu of land, marrying a tribal woman as a second wife to buy land in her name, employing tribals as servants and getting land registered in their name, etc.

The goal is always the same - to get control over land and natural resources to which tribals have enjoyed entitlement for ages. According to an independent study, in just the town of Khatima for instance, 8071 acres of land has been transferred from tribals to non tribals since the formation of the State of Uttarakhand.

But the women of Khempur were not willing to let their pond go. "There were four ponds around Khempur earlier. Three had already been lost to encroachments", says Kalawati.

The first instinct of the Tharus was to attempt to resolve the matter amicably. But when Jangir Singh threatened them, they decided to ask the administration for help. It was the women who took the lead. Among them Kalawati - the secretary of a local self help group (SHG) - and Pushpa Devi, treasurer of another SHG. Both are also part of the Khempur unit of the Bhoomi Adhikar Manch (BAM) a land rights forum. Both the SHGs and BAM are part of a five year development project called Bhoomi, funded by the British government's Department for International Development. Implemented by the Indian arm of Find Your Feet, UK, the project launched in 2007, addresses issues of poverty, lack of empowerment and denial of rights to 2580 tribals, mainly women, in 90 villages in Uttarakhand.

Four days after the pond had been taken over, 15 women and six men went to the panchayat in Dhusri (which covers six villages) to demand that the pond, a community resource, be returned to them. For a month nothing happened, despite Jangir Singh.s promise to the panchayat that he would return the land.

A month later the women again approached the Panchayat. A formal proposal for measuring the land and changing it back into a pond was passed. "Not all women joined in. They said the sardar was a dangerous man. We said, we are much more dangerous than him. And we told the women, if you won't help us now, we won't permit you to use the pond when we get it back", remembers Kalawati.

A day after the panchayat proposal, the women and some male BAM members demonstrated at the office of the sub divisional magistrate in Sitarganj and handed over the resolution. Fearing that there would be no action in the case, they once again marched to the SDM office after three days and issued an ultimatum to the officer. Within a week, block level officials were sent to Khempur for measuring the erstwhile pond and to mark the area.

Two days later the temporary wooden logs that served to mark the area were forcibly removed by Jangir Singh. More threats to the women followed.

Pushpa Devi says that act made the women even more determined to fight for the pond. "We heard the Rai Sikhs had been complaining among themselves that the women of Khempur talked too much and needed to be taught a lesson. But there was no way we could let go what belonged to us and our children. When the other ponds were lost, we did not know a community could own resources. Now we do."

Another demonstration at the SDM office followed and once again block level officials were sent to measure the land. Sensing the growing enormity of the situation, Jangir Singh backed off.

That is just one success story in a state where tribals are slowly realising their rights. Bhajan Singh Rana, president of the state-wide BAM says, "It is not that the tribal does not fight. But once defeated, he loses the courage to pursue the matter any further. Despite their large numbers (Tharus are the biggest tribal group in Uttarakhand) they lose because they are not well represented in government and politics. We are not in confrontation with the government. We are only asking for proper implementation of what has already been promised by the government."

In this case, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 which promises both individual and community rights to communities which have traditionally lived in or around forests and have drawn livelihood from the same.

Pushpa Devi says the land rights forum has a difficult task at hand. "If we announce a meeting, only a few villagers turn up. They think it is far better to earn a day's labour wages than invest in a meeting that might not yield any results. The emphasis is on enrolling more and more women because while men can be made aware of the issue, they do not feel the emotional connect that women have with land. Though we do not have land in our name, we are determined that our children not be deprived of their rights."

Thus it is unsurprising that in many villages it is the women who are drawing the men to join BAM.

Lal Singh Kopa in Udham Singh Nagar is another village under the project area where women are putting the power of the BAM to good use. Urmila Singh (30) recalls a time when the forest patrols would stop the village women from gathering firewood from the jungles. "I was returning from the jungle with my husband when the forest patrol stopped us and hit my husband. I took off my chappals and threatened to beat him up if he ever tried that again." What followed was a two month battle with the police and the forest department.

"Even BAM members who supported my fight, suggested a compromise to buy peace. I was unrelenting. I was fighting for my family's respect", says Singh. When the local media highlighted the issue, the department was forced to suspend the forest guard and later posted him in another village.

"I see this as a partial victory because the guard must be similarly harassing women elsewhere," says Singh. Thanks to her courage though, the women of Lal Singh Kopa have not faced any subsequent trouble during their daily forays into the forest. But they recognise that they will have to fight each step of the way for their rights - confronted by the might of the government machinery, the tribals of Uttarakhand will need many more Kalawatis, Pushpas and Urmilas.

Two Tier Series 3 - High Rise In Himalayan Foothills

In Rudrapur, a small but prosperous farming community is being taken over by a rapidly industrialising township, Swati Reddy reports.

If Jim Corbett immortalised Rudrapur in his Man Eaters of Kumaon for its verdant jungles, the city is now regaining the forest nomenclature — just that it is a concrete jungle that is sprouting here. This rapidly-developing township in the flatlands of the Terai, the Himalyan foothills, was once the playground of tigers. Today, with the Uttarakhand government having made Rudrapur into an industrial manufacturing hub, it’s host to corporate tigers.

Development in Rudrapur began after the State Infrastructure Industrial Development Corporation of Uttaranchal (SIDCUL) was established in 2002 and selected the city as one of three sites to promote industrialisation. The decision was followed by tax and economic incentives announced by the central and state governments. Basically, the Central initiative (first by the NDA and then the UPA) has meant a 10 year tax holiday (no excise, no VAT and no income tax) and a Rs 50 lakh capital subsidy for industries. A number of big players — Tata Motors, Dabur, Bajaj Auto, Britannia, Parle, Nestle, Ashok Leyland and Zhandu Pharma have set up huge manufacturing facilities.

And since the government owns large tracts of lands, there is no agitation of the kind that Buddhadeb Bhattarcharya and Naveen Patnaik had to face in West Bengal and Orissa over the setting up of industrial zones. The road from Rudrapur to Pantnagar is lined with giant industrial units.

However, in Uttarakhand (as the former Uttaranchal has now been renamed), the usual explanation that no arable land is being taken over doesn’t hold — there is no land but arable land! These foothills are so fertile — home to paddy, sugarcane, wheat and soya — that locals joke that if one sowed stones, they too would sprout.

Originally a town cleared from thick forests by the government to resettle refugees from West Punjab and East Pakistan, after the partition, Rudrapur now houses the next generation of their families. A Rudrapurbased journalist, Saroj Mandal, says that imigrants were resettled in an area of about 164.2 sq km. And according to resident Pradeep Sarkar, “The Government alloted land to refugee families, helped clear the land, gave seeds, money and clothes.”

Until then, there had been no town: the Terai was a jungle, infested with tigers, leopards and other wild beasts. From that first clearing, a farming community grew, in the surrounding villages of Kichcha, Gadarpur, Pilwit and Dineshpur. Rudrapur is in the centre of this rural farming region, and provides connectivity to the communities in the villages around.

If you meet a local acquaintance to scope out the area, you are inundated with a flood of information and a flurry of invitations for dinner. A visit to Sarkar’s (a farmer) house does, however, tell you how different life in water-rich Rudrapur is, compared to Delhi. He doesn’t wake up at 5 am to switch on a tube well motor, as Delhi’s denizens need to: he says that residents just need to drill to 150-200 ft depth and water gushes out 24/7 — a special feature of the low-lying Terai. It’s the abundance of water that is eminently visible in the paddy fields in and around Rudrapur.

Buit the bucolic pleasantries come to a curt end by the time you reach the actual town, after cruising through the periphery of Udham Singh Nagar district’s rolling green fields. Chaotic miniature reflections of a Gurgaon or a Noida jolt you into the reality of a fast urbanising city.

And not a pretty reality at that. Rapid development of Rudrapur meant that agricultural land prices were inflated overnight after the SIDCUL-sponsored industrialisation started rolling out. Panchayat members admit that agricultural land valued at Rs 2-3 lakh per acre was sold overnight for Rs 1 crore. Even with settled prices now, agricultural land fetches Rs 60-70 lakh per acre.

But the government rate is still Rs 10 lakh per acre. Contrary to expectation, not many were unhappy about the rising land prices as most of the families had plenty of land. It is the huge increase in construction that has deperived agriculture of its labourers. The workers now prefer more rewarding construction work — which is available all year round — to farming, which is seasonal.

If ugly development is synonymous with most cities in India, Rudrapur is certainly no exception. Visitors can cherish the worst flaws of urban India. With soaring land prices and decreasing space in Rudrapur town, buildings are more or less like conjoined twins.

Not only are developers building flats in the town for the rising number of executives with jobs in the large corporations that have set up plants here, they are also selling their condominiums as being at hailing distance to the hills stations of Uttarakhand (Nainital, Bhimtal or Ranikhet).

And the pace of construction is such that the single main road linking Rudrapur to Uttar Pradesh on one end and the hills of Uttarakhand on the other is clogged with trucks. Some are involved with the construction effort; others ply the same highway, carrying supplies to the factories and their finished products back.

Rudrapur has also just had its tryst with mall culture. Families – both of the landed rich and those of labourers — flock to the sole mall, the appropriately named Vishal Mega Mart. But the middle-class parents grouch about their brand-conscious children, even as another snazzy shopping arcade, Metropolitan Mall, is on its way up.

If development is calculated by sheer number of high rises, Rudrapur is certainly well down that path. In the foothills of the Himalyas, the mountains look down mockingly on those who try to challenge them. •

Uttarakhand: After The Deluge, Mystry Remains Untapped

By M H Ahssan & Swati Reddy

The human toll remains a mystery, but it will take years to recover from the mammoth economic cost. On 23 June, the last day of search and rescue for survivors by the army in Kedarnath, Dhirendra Kumar collapsed after a strenuous climb to the temporary helipad in Gaurikund. He panted and cried at the same time. His mother and grandmother had come to the holy town to fulfill their wishes. Kumar, a bus conductor from Kekri in Rajasthan, had saved up for several years so that the two women could go on the pilgrimage.

Revealed: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Rawat Shuns 15.81 Crore Official Bungalow 'Because It's Unlucky'

One of Uttarakhand’s most luxurious bungalows has been waiting for its occupant for a year now.

Located in the Cantonment area in the city, the state-of-the-art bungalow has failed to attract Chief Minister Harish Rawat, who continues to live at the state government's Bijapur guest house.

Sources close to him said that the CM’s hesitation to move to the bungalow is because of the ill-luck it had brought to the previous chief ministers residing there. 

Uttarakhand Disaster Victims 'Releif' Cheques Bounced

By Swati Reddy / INN Live

It has been three months since floods ravaged Uttarakhand and INN has now learned that compensation cheques have been dishonoured. More than a dozen compensation cheques given to victims of the Uttarakhand tragedy have bounced. 

While the state government claims it has enough funds, the bank account from which cheques have been issued reportedly has zero balance. "After the incident, the government gave me some relief through this money. But when I went to deposit the cheque they said the bank has no money and returned it," said a flood victim Radha Niwasi.

The Opposition has slammed what it calls the state government's failure to execute relief and rehabilitation.

Opinion: With Telangana – Divide and Rule Policy Adopted?

By Sri Sri Ravishankar (Guest Writer)

India is a phenomenon – the largest democracy on Earth, with a plethora of cultural, religious and linguistic diversity. It is simply a miracle that It still exists united, unlike the former Yugoslavian and Soviet countries. 

Though our forefathers had wisely divided the nation on linguistic basis for ease of administration and communication, the huge population and distances have forced many states to be further divided. One such crisis in the current scenario is Telangana. The situation of Telangana is very peculiar unlike Uttarakhand. 

Telangana History: Congress Will Win But TRS May Lose?

By Sanjay Singh / INN Bureau

After initial belligerence, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy has made a complete about turn over the creation of a separate Telengana state. Reddy seem to be doing what Lalu Prasad Yadav did 13 years ago when then NDA government decided to bifurcate Bihar and carve out Jharkhand. “Over my dead body”, a defiant Lalu  then said but soon allowed a resolution for the creation of Jharkhand to be moved in the Bihar assembly and also have it passed.

Reddy is doing the same after threatening to resign over the “destructive decision”, he now wants to abide by the party high command decision and “move on”.

Massive Epidemic Rise In Uttarakhand, About 3000 Sick

By Sonal Bhatt / Dehradun

Even as rescue operations continue in Uttarakhand, the rescue and relief teams had a new problem to struggle with. The continuing bad weather has not only hindered rescue operations, but has also led to the outbreak of epidemic in the region becoming a real fear.

Hundreds of people from local villages have been reporting to medical camps set up by the armed forces reporting symptoms of fever, diarrhoea and vomiting. High temperature and gastro-intestinal infections have been reported by at least 3000 people on Monday and Tuesday in Ramnagar, a tiny village near Guptkashi in Kedarnath valet. Three ITBP men have also reported sick.

The Telangana Prophecy: Will More States Mean Conflict?

With the government clearing Telangana as India's 29th state, long-standing demands for separate states in other parts of the country have gained fresh momentum. This could be a foretelling of many more states to come, but would that necessarily augur ill for the unity of India? Noted historian Ramachandra Guha shares his thoughts.

Earlier in August, the UPA government decided to give the nod to India's 29th state Telangana, predictably setting in motion a spate of debates across the country.

Utt'khand Tragedy: Why Development Couldn’t Save Live?

By Jay Mazoomdaar (Guest Writer)

Nearly all the visitors who survived the catastrophe in Uttarakhand’s Garhwal region have been rescued. All that is left now is a ravaged valley and its hapless residents who will have to cope with the consequence of this calamity for years to come.

While offering to rebuild Kedarnath and much of Garhwal’s infrastructure that has been washed away, chief minister Vijay Bahuguna flatly refused to acknowledge that the disaster as manmade. Since he is not alone in his obsession for growth and contempt for the environmental bogey, it may be useful to examine a few myths that were reinforced in the past two weeks.

Clouds over India's Goddess Mountain

By Raja Murthy

From this Himalayan town about 380 kilometers from Delhi, my first view of mystical Nandi Devi was one of those velvet-cloaked, sledge-hammer moments in life that softly stuns the senses and leaves one wordless.

Golden early morning sunlight lit the snow-capped 7,800-meter peak, India's highest, as Nanda Devi glowed with strength, stillness, purity, silence - an awe-inspiring sight in the crisp mountain air. Tourist guides in Seventh Heaven and other next-life holiday paradises may not have many prettier sights to sell.

Meaning "Blessed Goddesses", "Princess of Mountains", "Bliss-Giving Goddess" or, perhaps more accurately, "Mother Goddess of the Mountain", the Nanda Devi area is an United Nations-declared World Heritage Park that ranks among major attractions in Uttarakhand, a state in north India also called "Dev Bhumi" or "Land of Gods".

The gods can't be faulted for their taste in real estate, as the Nanda Devi region, including the Valley of Flowers and the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, form one of the more spectacular scenic spots in South Asia.

But beautiful worldly paradises generally have a blighted side and Nanda Devi too, like its more famous cousin Mount Everest, is fighting off an onslaught of pollution, unruly development and other damage from a careless human presence.

Adding to its woes, the Nanda Devi region has been suffering strange weather patterns in recent weeks, particularly worrying busy adventure tourism operators like Arvind Bharadwaj.

"It's snowing hard in the month of May when the snows should be melting, and raining when the weather should be dry for trekkers and climbers," Bharadwaj told Asia Times Online after returning to Rishikesh on June 11 from a trekking expedition to the Nanda Devi east base camp.

In contrast, in January the ski resort of Auli in the region had to pack up right in the middle of its peak winter business period due to a lack of snowfall. The prolonged recession already has the regional tourist industry reeling with a 19-month low in business.

Bharadwaj blames the weird weather changes on the foolish local governmental policy of allowing plastic-roofed hothouse farming to spread unchecked in the area. "The heat from these plastic hothouses is devastating the local ecology," he said. "The media have not yet covered this aspect of problems Nanda Devi faces."

These climatic changes are rapidly melting glaciers on Nanda Devi, part of the larger problem of depleting Himalayan glaciers that supply 8.6 million cubic meters of water annually to Asian rivers.

Himalayan glacier-dependant major Asian rivers, also among the world's longest, include China's Yangtze and Yellow rivers, India's Ganges and the Indus that starts in Tibet and flows through India and Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh and Myanmar's Irrawaddy.

Scientists say the population of South Asia and China, comprising 40% of humanity, will face a severe water crisis in 50 years if the current melting rate of Himalayan glaciers continues.

A United Nations report released on June 10 warned of over 500 million people being displaced worldwide by the year 2050 as fallout from climate changes and resultant wrecked agriculture systems.

The Tokyo-based United Nations University Center conducted the June 10 study, along with the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, and the Atlanta-based CARE International.

The UN report also grimly predicted that 1.4 billion people in Southeast Asia, India and China, or a quarter of the human race, would be affected by melting Himalayan glaciers.

The melting rate appears alarmingly high within the Nanda Devi group of glaciers which include the larger Nanda Devi north and south glaciers that are each about 19 kilometers long, as well as the smaller Ramani, Kururntoli, Nandakna and Bartoli glaciers.

"The Nanda Devi glaciers are coming down the mountain slopes so fast that one can actually see the glacier tracks left behind in the last 15 years," said Bharadwaj. Well-behaved glaciers are supposed to move invisibly in inches across hundreds of years, not rush down mountain sides like kids in a kindergarten playground slide.

"The other critical issue is the commissioning of the large hydro-electric projects in the area," said Sunil Kainthola, coordinator of Mountain Shepherds, an ecotourism operator in Dehradun, the Uttarakhand state capital 45 km from Rishikesh. "There appears to be an unholy alliance between the development and conservation agencies."

Kainthola said mountain communities were having the worst of both worlds - displaced both in the name of conservation as well as development. "While conservationists have consolidated their territories in the upper reaches of the Himalayas, the Himalayan valleys are being colonized by public and private entities for hydro-power generation," he said. "This is also happening in the bufferzone of the Nanda Devi Biosphere. You are not allowed to graze a few goats in the name of conservation, but are allowed to blast the mountains for hydro-electric projects."

These commercial, climatic and conservation commotions are the latest stormy chapters in the three-decade ecology battles to protect Nanda Devi. Polluting adventure seekers caused damage enough for the government of India and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to close Nanda Devi in 1982 and declare the area a protected national park and biosphere reserve.

An Indian expedition in 1993 removed one ton of tourist litter from the Nanda Devi mountainside. Tourists now need permission from the local forestry department to enter the Nanda Devi area. Groups can have a maximum of five members and only two groups at a time are permitted in the area in one day, and four groups in a week. Children below 14 are not allowed to enter the Nanda Devi biosphere.

Problems multiplied for Nanda Devi after its fierce natural defenses were first breached in the 1930s. Before then, the mountain that locals consider sacred was protected by an imposing ring of over a dozen peaks, each over 6,400 meters, and the near impregnable 6,000-meter Rishi Ganga gorge. Nanda Devi defeated several 19th-century attempts by Western explorers to enter her heart.

In 1934, maverick British explorers Eric Shipton and William Tilman and their three Sherpa companions, Angtharkay, Pasang and Kusang, finally managed to access the upper Rishi Valley inner sanctum of the Mountain Goddess. Nanda Devi apparently approved of their burden-free approach of traveling light, carrying minimal gear and luggage in their expedition.

In the 1939 book Nanda Devi, Shipton described his first feelings on entering the forbidden inner ring of Nanda Devi valley:

Each step I experienced that subtle thrill which anyone of imagination must feel when treading in hitherto unexplored country. Each corner held some thrilling secret to be revealed for the trouble of looking. My most blissful dream was to be in some such valley, free to wander where I liked, and discover for myself some hitherto unrevealed glory of Nature. Now the reality was no less wonderful than that half-forgotten dream; and of how many childish fancies can that be said, in this age of disillusionment?

Seventy years later, Shipton and Tillman may be excused for wanting to dunk in the roaring Ganges the noisy motorbike gangs of "pilgrims" who clog the 21st-century approach to Nanda Devi, on the 264 km road from Rishikesh to Joshimath town, about 40 km from the India-Tibet border. The Nanda Devi north face is approached from Lata Village, 25 km from Joshimath, a drab, dreary, dingy town that appears not to have had a new lick of paint in the past 50 years.

"The quieter and more beautiful approach to Nanda Devi is through Almora [town] to the Nanda Devi east base camp," said Arvind Bharadwaj. Trekkers describe this route facing the Panch Chuli range, or Five Mountains, as dotted with "fairytale townships with rolling meadows, sleepy bazaars, untouched villages and open valleys".

The "fairytale townships" are actually deserted ghost towns that once flourished when the ancient Silk Route was active across India to China through Tibet. Villages such as Milam and Niti are now abandoned ruins of a once thriving India-Tibetan trade in the Himalayan heart, of goods being bartered or sold after being carried through high mountain passes. In his last visit this June, Bharadwaj counted only three families living among the ruins of Milam.

These political, economic and conservation changes in recent decades have upturned lives of the simple, hospitable people living in Nanda Devi region, particularly the Indo-Tibetan tribe of Bhotiyas in the Nanda Devi biosphere.

Some relief for the mountain tribals appeared with non-governmental agencies, such as the US-funded Nanda Devi Campaign that fights to return the rights of locals that were taken away when the government declared the Nanda Devi a protected area.

The Bhotiyas lost their livelihood after forest officials included them too in restrictions to access Nanda Devi reserves. The bungling bureaucrats threw the baby out with the bathwater, by seeing the Bhotiyas as part of the problem instead of as natural guardians of Nanda Devi.

"While the ecological situation has improved considerably, the economic situation of the Bhotiya community remains the same", Sunil Kainthola of Mountain Shepherds informed Asia Times Online. "The issue of restoration of access rights has become irrelevant as the traditional knowledge and skills structure has collapsed in between."

Kainthola explains that the younger generation has lost interest in traditional occupations such as grazing. "Neither are there enough goats, sheep nor are there skilled herders to revive the woolen industry”, he said. "However there is a temporary phase of quick wealth generation through collection of the fungus 'Yarsa Gumba' during the summer period. Though it brings instant money, the unchecked exploitation without any concern for sustainable use and the inter-village rivalry to redefine village boundaries is a serious concern."

Other international efforts try to spread more global awareness, such as the Adventure Summer Course in May last year in which 15 American students from the Georgia Southern University and North Carolina's Appalachian State University came for a three-week study tour of the Garhwal Himalayas range, which includes Nanda Devi.

Eco-friendly adventure tour operators such as the Mountain Shepherds in Dehradun and Red Chilli Adventures in Rishikesh form the next line of defense at Nanda Devi.

"The UNESCO and government of India should consider further opening of the Nanda Devi Core Zone in a phased manner with strict monitoring and community involvement, " said Kainthola, who also fears for mountain communities losing both their land and political representation through unchecked migration from land developers. "At the end peace will be the victim," he warns.

Why Cyclone Phailin Failed?: Political Planets 'Wrong Acts'

By M H Ahssan / INN Live

After a long, long time it seems as if we have got our disaster management act right with Odisha’s Phailin cyclone. Loss of life was in the low 20s, thanks to the proactiveness with which the Naveen Patnaik administration moved people out of harm’s way and thanks also to the support of the centre in terms of logistics and rescue operations. 

Crime Fighters: CBI Officials Turn Into 'Bhakts' To Nab Fraudster BLiving As 'Sadhu Badrinath'

By Alok Kumar

Interestingly the accused was located by the probe agency after it learnt about a suspected Facebook profile by the name Swami Durgesh Mahraj, which was believed to be run by the accused himself.

A man living as a sadhu at an ashram located right opposite to the historical Badrinath Temple of Uttarakhand, was finally arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation after absconding for over 12 years.

Interestingly the accused was located by the probe agency after it learnt about a suspected Facebook profile by the name Swami Durgesh Mahraj, which was believed to be run by the accused himself.

Analysis: Cabinet Reshuffle Is Aimed At UP Polls, But What If It Backfires?

By M H AHSSAN | INNLIVE

Recent Union Cabinet reshuffle - or 'expansion' as Prime Minister Narendra Modi likes to call it - threw up many clues for the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

Election analysts and poll pundits have already called the latest change in Modi's Council of Ministers an act of balancing caste and regional equations. Tuesday's expansion of the Union Cabinet is being touted as Modi's biggest political moves since he acquired the top office since May 2014.

How True Is Baba Ramdev's Theory Of All Conspiracies?

By Kajol Singh / INN Live

There is one thing common between controversial godman Asaram and yoga guru-turned-shadow politician Ramde v: they both blame all their problems on UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Ramdev, known for his inimitable belly-churning feat and overtly political yoga classes, has come down heavily on the Congress governments at the Centre as well as in Uttarakhand for hatching a conspiracy to defame him. The Uttarakhand Police booked Ramdev's brother Rambharat for allegedly kidnapping and beating a youth after a raid at the yoga guru's Patanjali ashram on Monday night where they found an injured young man identified as Nitin Tyagi.

Health Crisis: India's Wealthier States Are Showing An Alarming Decline In Immunisation Process

By NEWSCOP | INNLIVE

The warning signs from the latest National Family Health Survey data have gone unnoticed so far.

A fair amount of media attention has been given to the resurgence of diphtheria in Kerala, which has been attributed to some Muslims rejecting immunisation efforts due to misinformation. However, a much more dangerous and widespread trend of declining immunisation rates as evidenced by the recent National Family Health Survey 4 data, seems to have gone entirely unnoticed.

Utt'khand: 'Kali Avtaar Devi Unleashed Floods For Revenge'

By Kailash Behl / Dehradun

With the Uttarakhand disaster still unfolding, whispers and murmurs of bad luck and bad omens are already forcing their way out of the cracks of the tragedy. Call it superstition or co-incidence ! Since time immemorial, locals here have claimed that angering Dhari Devi, a form of Goddess Kali, will result in destruction. And their faith has seemingly been avenged, albeit in a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. On the evening of June 16, the idol of the goddess was uprooted from its ancient temple, located near Srinagar (Garhwal), for a hydel-power project. Hours after the idol was moved a cloudburst hit the Kedarnath valley, washing away the entire shrine town and killing hundreds of people.

Telangana: Birth Of A New State And Death Of Many Things

By Newscop | INNLIVE

ANALYSIS When labour pangs become insufferable, doctors suggest a Caesarean section. The baby is extracted out of the womb. Doctors in India are often accused of forcing Caesarean section on a mother, to earn a quick buck, and deny the child a natural birth, besides putting the mother at risk. 

The birth of India's 29th state is a case of precisely that. The time of Telangana's birth had come. The pain was at its peak. But spindoctors did not allow Telangana a natural birth. What happened in Lok Sabha was inevitable; the way it happened was totally avoidable.