Until August 2005, Indira Colony was a veritable slum on the outskirts of Hoshiarpur, Punjab. An unplanned locality that came up in 1985 on the low-lying bed of a seasonal rivulet, it was perennially beset with squalid conditions, potholed streets, overflowing drains and garbage.

Manjit Kaur could hardly have believed it but she has been cured of a two-decade-old list of ailments. Her cure has come neither through a doctor nor a stack of pills, but instead from a community-based safe drinking water project commissioned in her native Muktsar district, Punjab, four months ago.

Now Kaur, 45, is among the first in queue to fetch a 20-litre can of treated water in her village twice a day. It was contaminated water that gave her joint pains and bleeding gums. Now that the water is clean, Kaur's health is reviving.

His ochre robes and saint-like demeanour make him look like one of the ubiquitous dera godmen in the Punjab countryside. But this baba stands apart.

Chandigarh: The Lok Sabha polls are still a year away, but political parties are busy bolstering their pro-peasantry credentials

An ambitious breeding-in-captivity project aims to save the endangered vulture by preventing it from feeding on carcasses rich in the killer diclofenac drug. It may be a classical case of too little too late.

From atop the 13,600-ft high windswept crest of a steep, serrated ridge, the Samudra Tapu glacier is a giant blanket of ice and snow, covering the bowl-shaped valley between jagged Himalayan peaks

Farmers in Haryana have been persuaded to give up growing a lucrative crop because of the harm it causes to the earth.