Incessant rains unleashed more death and destruction on Monday in parts of north India, with 37 people killed in landslides and other rain-related incidents in the last two days even as the Army and NDRF teams stepped in to intensify the relief and rescue operations.
'The entire public needs to be evacuated immediately. Any day, the entire town can collapse.'
'We need an early warning system in India.'
The meeting came days after Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli telephoned his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi to greet him on India's 74th Independence Day, in the first high-level contact after bilateral ties came under severe strain following issuance of a new political map by Nepal in May.
If the Ganga manages a rebirth, so will the country.Roy
'Why did your generals try to grab a few square kilometres of Indian territory in Ladakh?' 'And what happened to the hard work that you and Prime Minister Modi put into the Wuhan and Mamallapuram meets?' Claude Arpi writes a letter to Xi Jinping, China's self-styled supreme leader, who turns 68 today, June 15.
Expressing shock at the unprecedented death and devastation caused by rains and floods in Uttarakhand and elsewhere, Left parties on Friday sought a probe into the "indiscriminate" damage caused to the hills due to construction of several power projects in the state.
We can expect to see more Chinese wolf warrior diplomats on the prowl, in India's neighbourhood, though its mailed fist is not so visible while dealing with India, observes Colonel R Hariharan (retd).
Chinese relief workers on Wednesday saved a 50-year-old woman from the rubble, 67 hours after a powerful 6.5-magnitude earthquake destroyed her home in China's Yunnan Province even as the death toll climbed to nearly 600 as more bodies were pulled out from the debris.
'The present government swears by Hinduism. But we lost three of our sants during earlier BJP regimes.'
Rescuers in quake-hit Chinese village faced difficulty in evacuating villages near rising lakes formed by landslides, complicating relief efforts following a powerful 6.5 magnitude earthquake that killed at least 410 people and injured 2,300 others.
'Above 2,000 metres the gradient of the Himalayas is very steep and if you build any infrastructure (roads, dams, hydro power projects) in these regions, it will not be able to sustain these events (the onslaught of debris that comes down with great speeds).'
India's water future remains very bleak. The monsoon season, which once extended to 4 months, is now down to less than 30 days of heavy rain.
Modi said Nepal and India can benefit if they cooperate and work together for the promotion of five Ts: Tradition, Trade, Tourism, Technology and Transport.
'Antony and I have been friends for over half a century, and I know the man does not tell lies. The problem is that what he believes to be the truth might not actually be true. He may believe that India needs the Congress, and that the Congress in turn needs the Nehru-Gandhi family, but that does not mean that India shares those articles of faith,' says T V R Shenoy.
This quiet assertion of China has allowed various smaller countries of South Asia to play China off against India. Most states in the region now use the China card to balance against the predominance of India. Forced to exist between their two giant neighbours, the smaller states have responded with a careful balancing act, says Harsh V Pant.
Each year, economic damages increase -- and once again, development gains are lost in one season of flood or bad drought.
As oil minister, he has overseen India's petroleum and natural gas needs. But now he also runs the environment ministry, where he has issued permits for 100 stalled projects in a month-long spree that has delighted industry but shocked green activists.
Germany, as the locomotive of Europe, has much to teach India in manufacturing and process management, says Rajeev Srinivasan.
There are lessons to be learnt from the Uttarakhand tragedy. Topping the list is the need to immediately stop mindless construction activity in the Himalayan hills, says Nitish Priyadarshi
To avert another Uttarakhand-type catastrophe, we must change course. We should stop pandering to the Indian elite's insatiable appetite for electricity, which is driving reckless dam construction, says Praful Bidwai
'The transmission sector is going to be the next sunrise industry.'
'We are rushing to 'develop' without carefully valuing natural areas.' 'With careful land use planning and scientific zonation at least 5 to 10 per cent of the country's land can be secured for tigers and other such species, and another 5 to 15 per cent kept under low-impact uses to support biodiversity that can coexist with human uses.'
