Endangered Uttarakhand:
The new Government needs to give a sharp, critical look at the existing pattern of development by Hiranmay Karlekar More...

दावानल का ताप और पहाडी जीवन की त्रासद सच्चाइयाँ : नवीन जोशी का हाल में प्रकाशित उपन्यास 'दावानल' कथा साहित्य के क्षेत्रा में न केवल एक नयी जमीन तैयार करता है बल्कि साहित्य और समाज के अनिवार्य रिश्ते को आत्मसात् करने वाले रचनाकारों और पाठकों के लिये एक आवश्यक पाठ भी प्रस्तुत करता है। More...

What is Needed is Real Democracy at All Levels:
The newly formed State of Uttarakhand is indeed a small State by all definitions. It is spread over 53119 kilometers inhabiting 15669 villages, 77 towns, 48 tehsils, and 95 blocks in 13 districts. Keeping in view its geographical, human and natural diversities, it is a mini-India in the real sense. Almost all the religious, sects, communities, and castes live together in perfect harmony and peace By R.P. Dhasmana, Source PUCL Bulletin More...

The waters have risen in Tehri:
The Tehri dam is a reality, but the promises made to the displaced locals have not been kept. by Harsh Dobhal More...

Axing Chipko :
Chipko is not a movement, it 'was'one. Its energies
sapped by excessive adulation, the movement
wound up too quickly. For a while, though,
Chipko came tantalisingly close to providing . for a corner of South Asia , socio economic development through a paradigm it that was self-developed by manish aryal More...

Forest Policies and Seed of Discord
Uttarakhand has had a long involvement with forest protests, whose latest incarnation was Chipko. Villagers have been reacting primarily to policies of the State, either the hill durbar or the government . the following description of forest policies in Kumaun and Garhwal is culled from social historian Ramchandra Guha's book Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Oxford University Press, 1989). More...

Anti-alcoholism movement in Uttarakhand
The anti-alcoholism movement in Uttarakhand differs from earlier attempts to impose prohibition here or elsewhere in the Himalaya. Activists in Pithoragarh, Nainital, Chamoli or Pauri, who have watched alcoholism sap the vitality of hill society, do not have faith in simplistic solutions. They view the problem of alcoholism as a symptpm of the deeper malaise of predatory "development", and are confronting it as such. More...

Decentralized development in Uttarakhand
How the new state has performed during these seven years? Whether the people have started realizing their aspirations, for the achievement of which they struggled? Has the successive governments of the new states initiated a process of peoples' empowerment and ensuring their right to development? If not what is the alternative course of action left with the people of Uttarakhand? These are some of the vital questions, which today bother the minds of the common peoples belonging to the area. More...

Water Scenario in Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand of the Central Himalayan Region, in fact, is the water tower of northern India as water is available in abundance there. The snow-capped mountains of the Central Himalaya cover the northern part of Uttarakhand. The glacier that is mass of ice fed by snow on the mountains travels down from the slopes of these peaks. With the steep slopes it slowly moves downhill towards the valley. More...