A vociferous protest against big dams reaches its crucial stage when union environment minister Jairam Ramesh was greeted with protest as he was arriving in Guwahti for a public hearing on the NHPC owned big dam in Arunachal Pradesh.
As the Union minister started the public hearing at Machkhowa, ITA, hundreds of local organizations and political parties approached him to register stiff protest again the on going construction of the big dam in Gerukamukh by NHPC in the name of the lower Subansiri hydel project. Citing the expert panel report, these parties and organisations have told the minister that the big dam might spell an ecological disaster for the people in down stream areas.
PermalinkSubmitted by Hayang on Wed, 29/09/2010 - 05:16
--Lame Excuse by NHPC CMD S.K. Garg--
Despite strident protests in Assam with environmental concerns over construction of mega dams, National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) Chairman-cum-Managing Director S.K. Garg says that the project builders plan to commission three units in March 2012 and the remaining five units by December 2012. This is because Rs 4000 crore of the Rs 9000 crore project has been utilized. That means 40% of the expenses have been made. But is this a reason enough to sacrifice environment and the population of downstream areas which cannot be compensated even if the Indian central government bring all the riches in the world. When land is lost, existence is lost. When existence is lost, the very right to our natural habitat is lost.
In the devastating floods caused by the Tehri dam in Uttarakhand, the central government has promised a package of Rs 500 crore to the state government. That means every year there will be floods, the Indian government will dole out Rs 500 crore. So, within 8 years, Rs 4000 crore will have to be shelved out. If this is the economics involved, Rs 4000 crore is nothing for a rich country like India where many politicians and ministers have pocketed hundreds and thousands of crores. So, the justification of Rs 4000 crore by S.K. Garg sounds to be a lame excuse to keep the industrial corporations who fund the elections happy and satisfied.
An audio-visual show on the LHC (Large Hadron Collider, CERN, Geneva) was held at the Physics Department of Gauhati University last Saturday as a part of the weekend seminar programme of the department. It followed the September 10 event of firing of the first proton beams of the LHC. In this one-and-a-half-hour long multimedia show, several video movies related to the first beams of LHC, interviews by experts highlighting the safety of the machine, and depiction of efforts by scientists and engineers toward making of the LHC, were shown. The video clips were downloaded from the Internet by Dr Madhurjya P Bora, Reader of the Department and working president of the Physical Society.
The ‘Film Appreciation Course’, being organised by the National Film Archive of India and Film and Television Institute of India in collaboration with the Assam State Film (Finance...
The Assamese Students Association Delhi (ASAD) will provide medicines and other amenities to those caught in the brimful misery in the time of flood in Assam.In a statement ASAD president Kumar Gaurav Dutta and general secretary Debabrat Morang said the the members of the student organisation will visit the flood affected areas with a helping hand.Moreover, the association is also holding a fund-raising painting exhibition on September 28 and 28 at the Assam House in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi to aid the victims. Besides, ASAD is also planning to address the effective mechanism to combat the annual flood, demanding the involvement of the central and state funded research institutes. The...
In a high voltage political drama, the Opposition Asom Gana Parishad has replaced president Brindabon Goswami with general secretary Chandra Mohan Patowary. The sudden and strange development came up after the sitting president Brindabon Goswami walked out of the stormy general body meeting organized at the Udeshna Cinema hall premises on Sunday. On the other hand, the central executive body has been dissolved minutes after two top guns Dr Arun Sarma and Sarbananda Sonowal resigned as vice presidents. Before that the party’s general body meeting cleared the decks for unification of the regional forces at a verbal vote. The Asom Gana Parishad was born in 1985.On that year, the party...
HTML clipboard By Amit DwivediIndia is gearing up to strengthen tuberculosis (TB) control so as to provide TB prevention, diagnostics and treatment, particularly for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), nation-wide by 2010. MDR-TB is TB that is resistant to at least two of the best anti-TB drugs, isoniazid and rifampicin. These drugs are considered first-line drugs and are used to treat all persons with TB disease. "The 4th Global Survey on anti-TB drug resistance does not indicate that the rates of MDR-TB are increasing sharply in India or in Indonesia, or in the South-East Asian Region as a whole. The overall rates for MDR-TB among new smear-positive cases in the Region is 2....
Despite the blast that rocked Sivasagar town on Saturday evening, the pro talk ULFA faction is holding a public rally for restoration of peace and normalcy in the town on Sunday. But amid tight security arrangement.According to information, preparation for holding the peace rally is completing and the ULFA cadres under ceasefire are working overnight to make the rally a grand success. Security has been tightened and police have intensified checking on the city streets. All these elaborate security arrangement have been made hours after ULFA's powerful bomb blast in Sivasagar on Saturday evening.Notably, 28 people have been injured at a powerful explosion in Sivasagar town in upper Assam....
The death toll at Chaiding has gone up to 45 on Friday night when they were trying to pilfer crude oil from a goods train along the Assam-Nagaland boder in Karbi Anglong district. But how the incident took place? Everybody knows how miscreants backed by a section police and NF Railway officials have been pilfering crude oil without any hindrance. The death of two NSCN(IM) cadres in the incident has revealed that a section of Naga rebels are also involved in this infamous racket.It’s a routine work of a section of miscreants. Goods trains are halted at this spot and crude oil worth crores of rupees are unloaded from wagons each and every day. A section of local residents also have been...
The main Opposition Asom Gana Parishad is holding its brainstorming general body meeting on Sunday in the city to finalise the unification of regional forces. But it hits a major hurdle in the face of stiff protest from United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) who opposes inclusion of former Chief Minister and AGP(P) president Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.According to information, ULFA's publicity secretary Mithinga Daimary, who has been languishing in jail threatens AGP of dire consequences it if proceeds with Mahanta. In an unsigned letter, Daimary said ,“There can’t be unification of regional forces in Assam with a person whose hands are stained with blood. He was quick to add that...
The Asom Gana Parishad is holding its executive body meeting on Saturday to finalise the agenda of the crucial general council meeting on Sunday. .According to information, the meeting is set to accept the report on unification of regional forces for approval in the general body meeting on Sunday.
More than 30 persons, including two NSCN-IM cadres, died and 40 others critically injured on Friday midnight in Karbi Anglong district while they were trying to siphon off fuel from a goods train which spilled over forming gas at Chaiding bordering Nagaland.According to information, the petrol leaked from the tanks and the highly combustible material formed gas suffocating them on Friday night. A gang operating from across the Nagaland border stopped the petrol laden goods train coming from Upper Assam at Rangapahar Siting, near Diphu, and broke open the tanks carrying the highly pressurized fuel.Fifteen bodies have been recovered on the spot while Nagaland police have claimed that they...
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