Relief efforts will have to reach out to eight million people
GN Bureau | April 30, 2015
Around $415 million are required to get the quake-ravaged Nepal back to normal, a UN report estimates.
The report, ‘Flash appeal for response to the earthquake’, has estimated the requirements to reach over 8 million people with life-saving assistance and protection over the next three months. This was done by assessing the requirements like food security, health, sanitation and hygiene, shelter, education and others.
READ: Death toll rises to 5,000
Going by this assessment, over 70,000 houses have been destroyed. Over 3,000 schools located in the 11 most severely affected districts are damaged. Up to 90 percent of health facilities in rural areas have been damaged. Hospitals in the district capitals, including Kathmandu, are overcrowded and lack adequate facilities. Many temples and heritage sites have collapsed. The more modern structures have withstood the severity of the quakes.
Among the affected population, 32,00,000 are women and children. Of the total women, 5,25,000 are in the reproductive age, of whom 4 percent (21,500) are pregnant. Also, 21,00,000 affected
population is below the age of 18.
READ: What happened in Nepal
The Food Security Cluster of the UN estimates that around 30,50,000 people are in need of food assistance in the country. Of these, 7,50,000 people live near the epicentre of the earthquake in poor quality housing. Impact on agriculture-based livelihoods and on food security is expected to be extremely high.
There`s a certain moment in diplomacy that`s too personal to be captured in a communiqué, too small to make the front page, but more revealing than the front page. This week, prime minister Narendra Modi reached Tashkent and, amid the pomp of state visits, managed to evoke the old Bollywood tunes
India became the 123rd WTO member to ratify the multilateral Agreement on Fisheries subsidies (AoFS) when it deposited the Instrument of Acceptance for Phase 1 on July 20, 2026. The ratification is restricted to disciplining Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (IUU), protection for overfished
India has become accustomed to hearing the 7% growth number. It is now less a milestone than an expectation. Yet the paradox is becoming clearer: maintaining 7% growth may be considerably harder than achieving it once. India’s real GDP grew 7.7% in FY2025–26, following growth of 6.5% in FY202
Justice Abhay Oka, who retired from the Supreme Court in May 2025, has said that the Constitution of India cannot be altered. Explaining the landmark Kesavananda Bharati judgment (1973) on the basic structure of the Constitution, he said, “This is one judgment that has saved democracy in India.&rdq
Mammals of India By A.J.T. Johnsingh and P.O. Nameer HarperCollins India in association with Bombay Natural History Society
When Shell bought Sprng Energy in 2022, India`s renewable energy market appeared to offer precisely what global energy majors were seeking: scale, growth and a place in one of the world`s largest energy transitions. Four years later, Shell is selling the same business to Aditya Birla Group for an enterpris
