This year's first P1 wild polio virus strain has been isolated in Delhi. Fourteen-month-old Gulnaz from Darbangia colony in Kirti Nagar area is the victim. Daughter of a rickshawpuller, the girl's family migrated from Bihar just six months ago. She was supposedly administered 10 doses of oral polio vaccine in the last two national immunization rounds in January and February this year. Till now this year, 106 polio cases have been isolated in India but all of them have been P3 strains. This is the first P1 polio case in Delhi after August 2006. P1 has been India's major enemy with the global advisory committee on polio giving top priority to its eradication. The Union health ministry successfully contained its spread in 2007 with just 36 cases. For the first time since 1999, the number of P3 cases had outnumbered the number of infections caused by P1 strain. P1 travels faster and infects more children, which is why the emphasis was on eradicating type 1 first. P3 is a very slow moving virus with low virulence. P1 causes paralysis in one out of every 200 children, as compared to P3, which causes paralysis in one out of every 1,000 infections. Health ministry sources told TOI that a polio vaccination round is scheduled to take place in Delhi this month. But states can undertake an emergency mopup operation whenever a P1 strain crops up. Polio has been crippling India, with 864 cases in 2007 compared to 676 cases in 2006. This made finance minister P Chidambaram allocate Rs 1,042 crore just for polio in the Union Budget for 2008-09, most of which will be spent to contain the virus in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Bihar, which reported 193 fresh cases of the crippling disease in 2007, has been exporting polio strains across India. An alarmed health ministry has now marked 72 blocks in Bihar as high risk. These blocks or the ones adjacent to them accounted for three-fourths of the total polio cases in the state in the past five years. In 2007, 90% of P1 cases were found in these blocks. According to experts, polio immunisation activities are being intensified in these blocks. A special immunization drive was conducted on January 13 in these 72 blocks. A ministry official told TOI:

The Delhi government would provide sewer facilities in over 200 villages of the Capital. Chief Minister and chairperson of Delhi Jal Board Sheila Dikshit announced this during the foundation ceremony of a boaster pumping station at Narela. Over Rs 782 lakh would be spent on the construction of Narela underground reservoir. The work is likely to be completed in 12 months. Expressing the government's commitment to provide water supply in rural areas of the Capital, Dikshit said, "By 2009, 58 underground reservoirs would be constructed in the Capital. Out of these, 28 would be constructed in East Delhi.' The Delhi Jal Board has approved of Rs 263.00 crores for the construction of 14 underground reservoirs. Sandeep Dikshit, MP from East Delhi, expressed his gratitude towards the Chief Minister for the all-round development of the Capital during the last nine years. Area MLA Charan Singh Kandera also thanked the Chief Minister for approving the commissioning of 58-ML capacity underground reservoir in the area.

Educationists believe that children can often help adults see the road ahead. Climate change is one cause they hope children will take up. So when the British Council organised the first ever "Climate Change Champions' programme under the its "Low Carbon Futures Project', it school students it turned to. The project operates at two levels: working with selected networks to influence action at the corporate level and secondly working with a wider young audience to bring about extensive action. Twenty participants in the age group of 16-18 years were short-listed from over 500 applications received form across the four regions of India. Says Dr GS Gujral, Head Science, British Council, "This programme is meant to motivate the youth to play a key role in mitigating the effects that climate change is causing in India and worldwide. The 20 winners will engage in awareness programes at a local level, perhaps by organising a school network, set up an eco project or talk to important people in their community about bigger plans.' Of the 20 participants, three have been selected to represent India at the G8+5 summit at Kobe, Japan in May. Their role would be to interact with world leaders and thinkers and make them aware of the problem of climate change. Nidhi Patel of Vadodara, one of the three, believes that the possible solutions to climate change are by involving people at the grassroots level. "We need to realise that we are destroying our planet and if we do not react now, we will not be able to save it from destruction. The policymakers should be careful that the policies should percolate down to the lowest levels.' Jaswanth Madhavan from Chennai, another finalist, has already participated in many inter-school climate change competitions and believes that the inverted pyramid approach is the best way forward. "Every individual must try and make changes at a personal level and then think of educating the others,' says Madhavan. He practises rainwater harvesting at home and also has a passion for weather forecasting.

High capacity bus corridors that promise to put the Indian Capital's public transport system in league with world-class cities like Beijing and Taipei will be thrown open to the public in June this year. Also called bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor, the first such pathway on the 14.5-km long Ambedkar Nagar-Delhi Gate stretch will be made operational by June 2008. The corridor is a set of roads elevated to form a pathway for high capacity bus systems. With BRT, the city will join cities like Beijing, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Bogot

CM opens international symposium on