Banda: Everything is in short supply here, especially hope. There was a flicker of it, though, when on April 30 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came here with Rahul Gandhi. Maybe the people were expecting a miracle, an end to the misery created by season after season of bad crops and the resultant rising debt.

Their hope proved to be short-lived.

Two villages in Uttar Pradesh have reversed the trend of migration by digging six kilometres of channels to bring water to drought-hit farms.

Programme to promote breastfeeding improves health of children under two in Khitwans village in Lalitpur district's Birdha block.

LUCKNOW: In a bid to promote bamboo cultivation and its usage, the state forest department along with the national bamboo mission would hold a workshop here on January 10. Currently, in India, there are 1,275 varieties of bamboo.

The national bamboo mission is to be implemented in 20 districts of the state. UP had sanctioned Rs 4.10 crore under the mission in 2008.

Lucknow: The forest department has come up with plantation targets for the year 2010-11. The department will plant saplings covering over an area of 55,000 hectares in the coming year. The plantation exercise will begin this month with the advent of monsoon.

LUCKNOW: With the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) expressing its inability to develop a power plant in the backward Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the Mayawati Government on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding with a private developer, Bajaj Hindustan Group, for setting up a 1980-MW thermal power plant in Lalitpur district of the State.

Uttar Pradesh has struck riches in the rugged badlands of Bundelkhand. Geologists have found mines of diamond, platinum and gold raising hopes that the region could one day turn into the proverbial El Dorado thereby alleviate the plight of the locals ravaged by drought for years.

CPI state secretariat demanding to stop acquisition process of fertile agricultural lands for upcoming power project in Lalitpur district on Thursday suggested that this project could be set up on forest department

After a year-long intense campaign by Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi that catapulted the backward Bundelkhand region into the national political discourse, the Cabinet will finally discuss tomorrow a comprehensive Rs 7,000-crore package that envisages large-scale irrigation and river-linking programmes.

LUCKNOW: Even as political parties continued to point fingers and accuse one another of not doing enough for the drought-hit farmers, a petty farmer committed suicide in Lalitpur district of Bundelkhand after his crop failed because of virtually no rainfall.

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