Hot water; hotter tempers
On April 10, a hot sunny day, Chennai’s Chepauk stadium became a fortress. Yellow barricades, armed policemen and security vans surrounded the venue. The Indian Premier League was in town, and the Chennai
Week (Kochi)
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Stepping on the gas
India has entered Phase II of tackling the tsunami disaster. It is now readying to rebuild and rehabilitate the affected areas and develop disaster prevention and management systems.
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Dam over troubled waters
The 450-megawatt Baglihar hydel power project threatens to pour cold water on the warming relations between India and Pakistan.
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Stepping on the gas
India has entered Phase II of tackling the tsunami disaster. It is now readying to rebuild and rehabilitate the affected areas and develop disaster prevention and management systems. In the first
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Brick by brick
Even as relief work continues in areas devastated by the tsunami, the corpus of the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund has quietly swelled to around Rs 500 crore. The money is said to be the largest corpus ever collected through the fund. This is just money that has been sent as Demand Drafts. "Cheques still need to be processed and taken into account," said a PMO official.
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The long road ahead
Searching through the rubble of his home for anything still whole, Laksmiah Poleh can see life's options quite clearly. He can give up and move his family back to their home state on the mainland and, if he's lucky, find work as a tenant farmer making Rs 1,700 a month.
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Mining problems
It was former chief minister Biju Patnaik's dream to set up a second steel plant in the state. His arch rival and three-term Congress chief minister J.B. Patnaik, too, was obsessed with the idea. But not so Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
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Song and dance
Hollywood actor Richard Gere met Manmohan Singh a few days ago. Former US president Bill Clinton will be here in March. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who has already visited "incredible" India three times since 1997, might follow soon. Their common concern: AIDS.
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Acts of fury
Bells jingled, colourful carnivals spread cheer; Asia was filled with festivity, as the people celebrated the Nativity of Jesus Christ. The festival of joy had just begun. But death was just hours away. When the most powerful earthquake in more than 40 years struck deep under the Indian Ocean, the Indonesian island of Banda Aceh became a mass graveyard.
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Action station
When the tsunami waves lashed the eastern coast, the Government of India seemed as much at sea as the people affected by the disaster. Information just did not move out of Delhi to the disaster areas.
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Missing links
The archipelago of the Andaman and Nicobar islands consists of 572 islands; 35 are known to be inhabited. These are home to five tribes. The Jarawas, Sentinelese and Onges are Negrito tribes. The Andamanese have ceased to be a tribe and a pure-blood Andamanese is a rarity. The remaining two are mongoloid tribes, the Nicobarese and the Shompen.