The Railways need funds

"The Kakodkar high-level railway safety review committee, which submitted its recommendations to Railway Minister, may not have said anything new or different from the past but it has chosen to tell the Railways how to mobilise the funds for a long overdue, massive safety upgrade programme over the next five years, with an estimate for Rs.1 lakh crore."

The Hindu : Opinion / Editorial : The Railways need funds: After Nitish Kumar brought the Railways back from the brink, and Lalu Prasad took all the credit for prudent financial management, Mamata Banerjee had virtually brought the Indian Railways to a situation of a financial collapse.

It is time the Planning Commission and Finance Ministry took a serious look at the state of the Railways. For if India's biggest employer is unwilling to take even small steps towards better managing its finances, there is no sense in it having a separate annual budget.

Maximum city, minimum will

"Mumbai needs planning, organisation and governance, not dug up roads, overflowing garbage and chaos. The Sena must seek pride in the running of a streamlined city and not just in the beautiful swimming pools or parks that it has built.

The Hindu : Opinion / Editorial : Maximum city, minimum will: The task before the corporation is enormous but not impossible. As one of the richest corporations in India, it has the funds. What it has lacked, alas, is the will."

Still sprouting after 32,000 years

"Scientists have been able to grow ancient flowering plants from immature fruit tissues buried 38m under the North-eastern Siberian ice deposits about 32,000 years ago. The tissues were recovered from the burrow of a ground squirrel. The regenerated plants flowered and also produced seeds. These seeds were in turn able to grow into plants that were identical to the parent plants"

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Still sprouting after 32,000 years: Another significant finding is that tissues remained viable and seeds germinated despite accumulating total gamma ray radiation of 0.07 kGy during the long period of burial.

This natural cryopreservation of plant tissues over thousands of years demonstrates a role for permafrost as a depository for an ancient gene pool … a laboratory for the study of rates of microevolution.

Ecology Vs Development

There is an intense debate regarding the difficulties in maintenance of the ecological system along with development...

Yatin Pandya explains the bad attitude of developers towards ecology and how they are just playing to the gallery and not actually taking any steps towards ecological preservation...

Designed to Kill: Trees versus development

Italian sailors have wronged

Recently, Kochi fisherman were killed by Italian sailors thinking they were pirates.

Somu CS, Head Of Dept., School Of Law, Christ University explains why the sailors are punishable under Indian Jurisdiction according to International Law...

The Italians, according to him are in big trouble if Indians exercise their authority properly...

Kochi fisherman: Italy in troubled water

Why is UP so backward?

One of the states that is extremely backward in terms if modernization and immense growth potential is the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Is it just because of lack of good politics...

No, the factors run deeper believes Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr.

UP misses date with modernity due to backward elites

Airline's and Airport's ratings

Tony Tyler, chief of IATA (International Air Transport Association) had warned about the poor infrastructure of airlines and airports in India.

Francois Gautier, a frequent flier in India rates the best airlines and airports of this country, and of course, the worst too...

Tibet and China, rising tensions

Jayadeva Ranade, explains the various religious tensions between Tibet and China... He also explains the after-effects of self-immolation of 22 Tibetans in China...

China braces for heightened tension in restive Tibet