TCS developed Rice Husk ash filter which can be useful for Bihar as we have many villages where water is not pure.
Brief Technical details are here.
Filter is priced at 200 and cartridge costs 25 rupees & lasts for 6-8 months.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Playing politics with floods
Do read this article by Dinesh Mishra ji.
http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/sep/gov-floods.htm
Other articles worth reading are
http://www.indiawaterportal.org/blog/index.php/2007/12/03/bihar-floods-relief-wo\
rk-contd/
Excerpts from 1st article are
----------------------------
State and Centre funding football
The responsibility of providing relief in the wake of natural
calamities including floods primarily rests with the concerned state
governments. The government of India supplements the efforts of the
state governments where necessary by providing logistic and financial
support. For this purpose, the state governments are allocated
Calamity Relief Fund (CRF), which is contributed by government of
India and the state government in the ratio of 3:1. Additional
assistance is also provided to the state government in the event of a
calamity of severe nature from the National Calamity Contingency Fund
(NCCF) after following the laid down procedure.
In August 2003, a corpus fund of Rs.108.97 crores was available with
the Bihar government in the CRF, as per the government's own reports.
Out of this money, only Rs.19 crores were released from the fund for
carrying out relief operations in the state till August that year.
Yet, the Rabri Devi Government in Bihar repeatedly flayed the central
government for not helping the state with the requisite money.
Anirban Roy wrote in The Hindustan Times (13 September 2003), "The
state government is yet to get the central assistance of Rs.112 crores
allotted in 2002-03 under special package for relief distribution in
the flood affected districts. The central government has not released
the money as it has taken the stand that the state government should
first spend the CRF money before it seeks the release of more central
funds." Obviously, the state government was not in a position to
provide the utilisation certificates for the funds sanctioned to it
earlier and wanted the flood victims to believe that the central
government was responsible for it. That was the time when the RJD was
in power in Bihar and the NDA was ruling in Delhi.
It is now 2007, and the scenario has reversed. The two governments
have exchanged positions. Lalu Prasad Yadav at the Centre suggests
that the state government has not made any demands to the Centre, and
that the Centre on its own initiative sent relief money to Bihar
although the state had not submitted the expenditure accounts for the
previous year. The NDA Government of Bihar says that whatever
assistance comes from the Centre is provided for under the regulations
of the 12th Finance Commission and is not at the behest of any one
minister at the Centre. Even so, according to a press report, Sushil
Kumar Modi, the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar said in early August
that the state had not received any money from the Centre.
http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/sep/gov-floods.htm
Other articles worth reading are
http://www.indiawaterportal.org/blog/index.php/2007/12/03/bihar-floods-relief-wo\
rk-contd/
Excerpts from 1st article are
----------------------------
State and Centre funding football
The responsibility of providing relief in the wake of natural
calamities including floods primarily rests with the concerned state
governments. The government of India supplements the efforts of the
state governments where necessary by providing logistic and financial
support. For this purpose, the state governments are allocated
Calamity Relief Fund (CRF), which is contributed by government of
India and the state government in the ratio of 3:1. Additional
assistance is also provided to the state government in the event of a
calamity of severe nature from the National Calamity Contingency Fund
(NCCF) after following the laid down procedure.
In August 2003, a corpus fund of Rs.108.97 crores was available with
the Bihar government in the CRF, as per the government's own reports.
Out of this money, only Rs.19 crores were released from the fund for
carrying out relief operations in the state till August that year.
Yet, the Rabri Devi Government in Bihar repeatedly flayed the central
government for not helping the state with the requisite money.
Anirban Roy wrote in The Hindustan Times (13 September 2003), "The
state government is yet to get the central assistance of Rs.112 crores
allotted in 2002-03 under special package for relief distribution in
the flood affected districts. The central government has not released
the money as it has taken the stand that the state government should
first spend the CRF money before it seeks the release of more central
funds." Obviously, the state government was not in a position to
provide the utilisation certificates for the funds sanctioned to it
earlier and wanted the flood victims to believe that the central
government was responsible for it. That was the time when the RJD was
in power in Bihar and the NDA was ruling in Delhi.
It is now 2007, and the scenario has reversed. The two governments
have exchanged positions. Lalu Prasad Yadav at the Centre suggests
that the state government has not made any demands to the Centre, and
that the Centre on its own initiative sent relief money to Bihar
although the state had not submitted the expenditure accounts for the
previous year. The NDA Government of Bihar says that whatever
assistance comes from the Centre is provided for under the regulations
of the 12th Finance Commission and is not at the behest of any one
minister at the Centre. Even so, according to a press report, Sushil
Kumar Modi, the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar said in early August
that the state had not received any money from the Centre.
A beautiful politician
This tribune article by AJ Philip is worth sharing with others.
He writes about TARKESHWARI SINHA who was elected as MP at the age of 26 years. She was named “Baby of the House” and “Glamour Girl of Indian Politics” by media.
She was from Nalanda and quite active in politics till 1969. She had been a Union Miinister twice.
It is sad that no one in media wrote about her death.
Mr Philip is right when he writes this:
It is a pity that when this stormy petrel of Indian politics died after a prolonged illness in New Delhi last week, few newspapers cared even to report her death.
Since, tribune does not link to story directly, I am copying whole article here....
He writes about TARKESHWARI SINHA who was elected as MP at the age of 26 years. She was named “Baby of the House” and “Glamour Girl of Indian Politics” by media.
She was from Nalanda and quite active in politics till 1969. She had been a Union Miinister twice.
It is sad that no one in media wrote about her death.
Mr Philip is right when he writes this:
It is a pity that when this stormy petrel of Indian politics died after a prolonged illness in New Delhi last week, few newspapers cared even to report her death.
Since, tribune does not link to story directly, I am copying whole article here....
A beautiful politician
by A.J. Philip
|
|
TARKESHWARI SINHA stepped out of college to step into the portals of Parliament House where for 19 years she spread radiance of a kind the august institution had seldom been accustomed to. Hardly 26 when she was sworn in as a member of the first Lok Sabha in 1952, the two sobriquets she earned instantaneously and which stuck to her indelibly were “Baby of the House” and “Glamour Girl of Indian Politics”.
Her face might not have “launched a thousand ships” like Helen of Troy but it certainly turned fellow members’ heads every time she strode into the House or stood up to make an intervention. When girls of her age were reading Mills and Boons by the dozen, she plunged into the 1942 movement as a student of Bankipore Girls College, renamed Magadh Mahila College in Patna.
Her family thought her honeymoon with politics was over when she tied the nuptial knot with the scion of an aristocratic zamindar family of Chapra, whose tenant was once the first President, Dr Rajendra Prasad. Married life in Kolkata did not keep her off from politics for long.
The INA trial in Delhi rekindled her passion for politics and soon she found herself elected President of the Bihar Students Congress, which broke away from the All India Students Federation. She was among those who received Mahatma Gandhi when he arrived at Nagar Nausa in Nalanda district to quell the anti-Muslim riots in the aftermath of Partition. The Mahatma also had a taste of the people’s fury when he was “manhandled” there.
Within a few months, Tarkeshwari was at the London School of Economics doing her M.Sc in economics. “Harold Laski had just left LSE when I joined there”, she had told me in an interview. However, she had to cut short her research on Indian taxation and return to India when her father died.
By then India had become a Republic and the first general elections had been ordered. She won from Barh defeating veteran freedom fighter Sheel Bhadra Yajee. The “Beauty Queen” took such an active part in the debates in the Lok Sabha that Jawaharlal Nehru immediately noticed her debating skills.
However, it was only in 1958 that Nehru chose her for a ministerial assignment. She became deputy to Finance Minister Morarji Desai. They became so close that tongues began to wag. And, when the Congress split in 1969, she sided with Morarji Desai and it marked the end of her political career.
Indira Gandhi disliked her so much that when greenhorn Dharambir Sinha defeated her in 1971, she rewarded him with information and broadcasting portfolio. Tarkeshwari returned to the Congress and contested on its ticket in 1977 when every Congress candidate in Bihar was routed.
Eventually, she quit politics and took up social work. It was in that capacity that she once came to invite me to Tulsigarh, her native village in Nalanda district.
Tarkeshwari wanted to show me a hospital she had set up in memory of her brother Capt Girish Nandan Singh, an Air India pilot who died in an air crash in New Delhi. During the journey to Tulsigarh, she told me how she had raised nearly Rs 25 lakh, a big sum those days, to construct the two-storeyed hospital where treatment was almost free.
She also prided herself in taking the initiative to construct a road to link the village with Chandi and Harnaut in Nalanda. During the return journey, I summoned up courage to ask her about her insinuated closeness to Morarji Desai.
“We became Central ministers on the same day. He trusted me and I trusted him. When Lal Bahadur Shastri died, I felt that he should have been elected Prime Minister. There was nothing more to our relationship”, she replied in a matter of fact manner.
Caste also cemented their relationship. Bhumihars of Bihar, of whom she was one, trace their ancestry to Lord Parasuram. They believe that Morarji Desai, too, was a Bhumihar.
It is a pity that when this stormy petrel of Indian politics died after a prolonged illness in New Delhi last week, few newspapers cared even to report her death.
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