By Chandan Sharma
FNS
Indian capital Delhi has become a city of nuclear families and joint family system has come to extinction in the ‘heart of India’ as the over three-fourth of the households belongs to the single married couple category here. Read the rest of this entry »
By FNS
Delhi’s Lt. Governor Tejendra Khanna has asked a detailed report on the deficiency and status of the all parks developed by DDA. Read the rest of this entry »
In an initiative to sensitise and educate students about keeping the environment clean and healthy, a drive will be launched Monday across schools and colleges of Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR). Read the rest of this entry »
Gulab-Khas, Amrpali, Husnara, Mallika, Malda, Langda, Alphanso… over 400 varieties of mango have been exhibited in the 22nd Mango Festival, inaugurated in New Delhi today. The annual festival has witnessed large number of participants- from traditional mango growers to co-operative and well established universities including IARI.
The King of fruits is much in demand demand in countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Amsterdam, China and United States. India is exporting mango to UAE, China, USA and Australia and other countries. The festival provides a platform to explore opportunities for mango growers and traders in this regard while mango lovers get opportunity to see and taste the large varieties of mango at a place.
Inaugurating the festival Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said that Mango Festival has become an annual celebration of the city and everybody wait for the festival throughout the year.
Delhi will get a ‘knowledge city’ in South Delhi very soon. The knowledge city will be a hub of industrial activities related to knowledge creation and its uses. An announcement has been made in this regard by Delhi’s Industry Minister Haroon Yusuf.
He also said that Delhi would set up two SEZs , one for Gem and Jewellery industry and another for IT , under the public private partnership (PPP) in a span of 30 months with the help of Delhi State Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (DSIIDC). This will create direct and indirect employment for over two lakh people.
It is notable that a new comprehensive industrial policy has been approved by Delhi Cabinet on Monday. The new policy focuses non-polluting industries like IT, IT enabled services, Hi-tech, sophisticated knowledge based and services and discourages labour-intensive manufacturing sector. As Haroon says that the government is now focusing on Infrastructure development, decongestion, promoting ‘walk to work’, industry consultation and other areas.
The Union government has already been approved both the SEZs in last month. While the SEZ for Gems and Jewellery will be set up in an area of 41.4 acres at an estimated cost of rupees 489 crore the IT SEZ will cost around rupees 395 crore and will have an area of 26 acre. The IT SEZ will have a convention halls, hotels, hospitals and residential accommodation. IT SEZ will provide direct employment to 36000 people and indirect employment to 1.08 lakh people.
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit today exhorted children to function as an Environment-ambassador. In an interaction session with school children at Delhi Secretariat she requested children to at least plant seven saplings and preserve them as their family member to make the city green.
Stressing upon the need of utilization of recycled paper she said that practice may help in saving around 40,000 trees in a year. She also underlined the need of making mandatory use of recycled papers in business houses
Secretary (Environment) Dharmendra Kumar informed the students about the scheme of Eco-club in schools and colleges. He said that to make more effective and action oriented, the department has initiated a programme called vacation programme for the eco-club students since last six years. Under the scheme, 80 students (40 from govt. schools and 40 from pvt. schools) selected through a competitive process. These children were trained for 10 days in Delhi during winter vacation and 5 days out side Delhi during summer vacation.
About 100 students of different schools of Delhi to meet Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and discuss the issues related to the environment and Green Delhi. These students will belong to eco-club of different schools.
It is notable that these Eco-Clubs have played an important role to increase green area in Delhi and to make successful campaigns like anti fire-crackers, say no to plastic bags, rain water harvesting and several other campaigns related to better and green environment in the city. These Eco-clubs were started in 1998 with a participation of 100 schools. Now the number of such schools having their eco-clubs has been increased by 25 times. There about 2500 Eco-Clubs in the schools and colleges. About 100 colleges and educational institutions too have been included in this category over a period of time.
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has been interacting with the representatives and member students of Eco-Clubs regularly and discusses several issue about the environment. This time the role of these Eco-Clubs have become more important as Delhi is organizing Commonwealth Games this year.