Sacred portals of the Kedarnath temple were reopened to devotees amid elaborate rituals early on Sunday morning, about a year after the Himalayan shrine was marred by flash floods that had left hundreds of people dead and many others stranded.
Himanshu Thakkar and Parineeta Dandekar reveal how government actions and neglect created such massive disaster from a natural phenomenon in Uttarakhand.
While Air India employees are contributing a day's salary to the Prime Minister's Relief Fund, its pilots have offered to forego their allowances to operate to Dehradun.
India should encourage the second coming of SAARC with climate change as an urgent agenda and keeping Indian security concerns in mind as the subtext, suggest Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd) and Colonel Anil Athale (retd).
'The Himalayas are the Creator of Life.'
Yet another effort has been made by the state government for a scientific study with the help of satellite imagery of the crisis in the sinking town, Bhatt, who is associated with the Chipko Movement, said.
The temple doors were opened at 8.50 am and the prime minister arrived just about half an hour later to offer prayers and perform a 'rudrabhishek'.
Hemantkumar Shivsaran compares the number of rallies held by the BJP leadership in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
'Truth be told, Amrita Singh and Saif Ali Khan's daughter has tons of filmi blood and it is what powers Kedarnath from start to finish,' says Sukanya Verma.
'The difficulty of coordinating the response in Uttarakhand suggests that the country is ill-equipped to deal with a large earthquake in a mountainous area. The effects would be many times worse,' warns Dave Petley, expert on landslides
'This is probably why the late General Bipin Rawat, who hails from the Garhwal Himalaya, said that the existing roads are fine with the army.'
Rain water gushed into the town from the summit behind the famous shrine carrying rocks and boulders, destroying everything on its path.
'From environmental impact assessment to forest clearances, this has turned out to be an unscientific road-widening project with catastrophic consequences.'
Nepal, which is reeling under Saturday's earthquake, is likely to experience widespread rains and thundershowers which may trigger landslides, according to the weather department which has asked people to remain alert.
India and Indians can ignore Pakistan, but that cannot be said of other nations in the neighbourhood, where New Delhi's 'Neighbourhood First' policy constantly reverberates. Four of the eight SAARC member-nations are Muslim -- Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The rulers decide the nation's India or anti-India policy in the first two, and street-opinion contributes to the same in the latter two, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
"The earthquake has provided a great opportunity for Nepal to rebuild the country's infrastructure and to make the lives of the people better
The unstated aim of a well-publicised airlift operation of this kind is to demonstrate India's ability to rapidly move troops and equipment over long distances.
'It is pure luck that we did not have any body bags, otherwise things could have been nasty.'
Like millions of people across the world, the year 2020 had dealt me irreplaceable losses and the lowest of blows. Like I have always done at such junctures, I had sought the refuge of the mountains. I wanted to end the year on a high, to show the finger to life, says Sumit Bhattacharya after a memorable journey to North Sikkim.
The operation is not a favour to Nepal. It's in India's interests to rebuild a new Nepal
'Delhi was not concerned.' 'It would continue sleeping for several more years, with the result that Indian territory is still occupied by China today,' says Claude Arpi.
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