News stories by Athar Parvaiz, page 2

Aug 03 (IPS) - Going against its own orders, the government in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has ordered the fast-tracking of environmental clearances despite manifest evidence of illegal sand mining.

BANDIPORA, India, Feb 10 (IPS) - Warming himself with a kangri (a firepot) kept under his pheran (a long winter cloak worn by Kashmiris), 66-year-old Mohammad Subhan Dar sat chatting with a bunch of his fellow villagers on a January afternoon on the edge of the road overlooking Wular Lake in Saderkote-Bandipora, northern India.

DARJEELING, India, Feb 17 (IPS) - Mountain communities in the Himalayan region are almost entirely dependent on forests for firewood even though this practice has been identified as one of the most significant causes of forest decline and a major source of indoor air pollution.

GANGTOK, India, Feb 01 (IPS) - Bina Sharma, a member of the Melli Dhara Gram Panchayat Unit in the southern part of India's northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, is a relieved woman.

PAHALGAM, India, Aug 17 (IPS) - As he struggled to find a section of the stream clean enough to rinse off his muddy shoes, Mohan Kumar, a Hindu pilgrim on his way to the holy Amarnath shrine in Indian-administered Kashmir, gazed with despair over the filth that lay thick on the landscape.

SRINAGAR, India, Jul 17 (IPS) - Rizwana* had hoped and expected that justice would be served – that the man who raped her would be sufficiently punished for his crime. Months after she suffered at his hands, however, the perpetrator remains at large.

SRINAGAR, India, Mar 05 (IPS) - For years, Kehmli Devi, a middle-aged woman from the village of Chachadeth in India's northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, has prepared her family's meals on a wood-burning stove.

, Oct 23 (IPS) - Rafiqa Kazim and her husband Kazim Ali had a simple dream – to live a modest life, educate their four children and repay the bank-loan that the couple took out to sustain their small business.

KUTCH, India, Jun 18 (IPS) - When Sangan Bhai, a humble man in the Kutch region of India's western state of Gujarat, was offered a position as an executive member of the local camel breeder's association, he made a decision that surprised his community: instead of accepting the prestigious post he offered his wife's name instead.

SRINAGAR, India, May 05 (IPS) - Forty-seven-year-old Shahmala's husband has been missing since 1993. In India's restive Jammu and Kashmir state, she is what is known as a half-widow, a woman who has no clue whether her husband is dead or alive.