At least 18 children, all below the age of 10, died this morning after a landslide triggered by a cloudburst struck a primary school building in the hills of Bageshwar in Uttarakhand. Thirty students and two teachers were in the school at the time of the incident.
Eight injured children have been pulled out of the debris but the teachers are still missing.
Around 500 trees of different species were destroyed after anti-social elements allegedly set a fire in the Maladidhar Van Panchayat area near Mandalsera village here. The villagers along with others worked together to control the fire and succeeding in it after four hours of toiling.
The Renewable Energy for Rural Livelihoods (RERL) project tries to demonstrate the use of renewable sources of energy in reducing poverty through improved quality of life and increased livelihood opportunities in remote, non-electrified villages of India that are not likely to get electricity from the grid.
The Renewable Energy for Rural Livelihoods (RERL) project tries to demonstrate the use of renewable sources of energy in reducing poverty through improved quality of life and increased livelihood opportunities in remote, non-electrified villages of India that are not likely to get electricity from the grid.
Crumbling schools in earthquake-prone Himalayas The afternoon of May 12 will haunt memories of parents of school going children of Sichuan Province in China for years. Thousands of children perished under the collapsed buildings of their schools as an earthquake measuring more than 7.9 on the Richter scale jolted the province. Photographs of the collapsed school buildings bear ample testimony
A study conducted in 45 villages in the central Himalayas assesses the current status of van panchayats, an old institution of decentralised forest governance. It finds that locals are indifferent to the administrative jurisdiction of the forest in the course of their resource extraction activities. There is no quantitative evidence that they are exercising restraint while accessing and using locally governed forests. Collective rule violation appears to be common. May 3-9, 2008
If soil quarrying is a threat in the terai, mining poses huge hazards in the hills of Kumaon. Soapstone or talc and magnesite quarries have been taking over commons for over two decades, depriving local people of large tracts of the forestland, pasture, watersheds and farming land.
