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Time of India
6 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
After success in Rampur, ‘Village Mall' model set to multiply in UP
Lucknow: The state govt on Thursday said that the 'Village Mall' (Pragati Mall) model, where city-like facilities are being made available in villages, is now emerging as a transformative example across the state. The concept is aimed at making village panchayats in Uttar Pradesh self-reliant and revitalising the rural economy, said a state govt spokesperson. The first such mall has come up in the Dhamora Gram Panchayat under the Milak development block of Rampur district. According to chief development officer Nand Kishore Kalaal, the mall was constructed using public contributions, without spending a single rupee of govt funds. The entire Rs 1.60 crore cost was recovered through the reserved shop allotments. The mall includes 43 shops, all allotted to local villagers. It is already supporting the livelihoods of hundreds of families and generating a monthly rental income of Rs 30,000 for the panchayat, said Kalaal, while adding that the construction of the second mall is nearing completion in Rampur's Mankara Gram Panchayat of Bilaspur Tehsil. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like No annual fees for life UnionBank Credit Card Apply Now Undo This mall, which is set to host outlets of major national and international brands, was developed at a cost of Rs 3 crore. It houses 28 shops designed to promote local entrepreneurship and self-employment. A key highlight of the project is the strict adherence to the reservation policy in the allotment of shops, ensuring social justice and inclusive development. "These village malls are generating substantial local employment opportunities and empowering residents by providing them direct access to markets," the spokesperson said. Before 2017, the vast tracts of govt land were encroached upon. "Under the Yogi govt, these lands are being reclaimed and transformed into vibrant economic hubs, restoring dignity and prosperity to rural communities," he said. This innovative model is now set for wider implementation across Uttar Pradesh. By offering a platform for women, youth, self-help groups, and local producers, the village malls will connect rural products to broader markets and play a crucial role in strengthening the village economy. "The Pragati Mall concept has become a milestone in the journey toward a self-reliant India. It stands not just as an example of reclaiming encroached public land but also as a testament to development powered by public participation," said Kalaal, while noting that the Rampur model is now inspiring other UP districts. Stay updated with the latest local news from your city on Times of India (TOI). Check upcoming bank holidays , public holidays , and current gold rates and s ilver prices in your area.
Time of India
03-08-2025
- Climate
- Time of India
Ganga, 5 other rivers in spate as rain lashes state
Patna: Incessant rainfall over the past 24 hours in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, including in the catchment areas of north Bihar rivers in Nepal, triggered a sudden surge in the Ganga on Sunday with the river flowing above the danger level from Buxar to Kahalgaon, except at Munger and Bhagalpur. Five other rivers were also reported to be above the danger mark at six locations. The situation along the Ganga was becoming increasingly concerning. On Sunday, the river was flowing 73cm above the danger level at Allahabad and 1.68 metres above at Varanasi. In Bihar, it was 8cm above the danger mark at Buxar. In Patna, the level at Digha was 7cm below the danger line, but at Gandhi Ghat, it was 51cm above the danger mark of 48.60 metres. It was also flowing 34cm above the red mark at Hathidah and 37cm above the threshold at Kahalgaon, according to the state water resources department (WRD) flood bulletin. The situation is likely to worsen from Monday. Among other rivers, the Kosi was also flowing above the danger level at two locations – Baltara (Khagaria) and Kursela (Katihar) – with water discharge at 1.76 lakh cusecs through the Birpur barrage on Sunday afternoon. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Is this legal? Access all TV channels without a subscription! Techno Mag Learn More Undo The Bagmati, Burhi Gandak, Kamla and Punpun rivers were also in spate, crossing danger marks at four other points. Central Water Commission (CWC) projected further rise in the Ganga's level by 22 to 41cm by Monday morning. Twelve locations in Bihar recorded significant rainfall in the past 24 hours, according to the CWC. These locations are Taiyabganj (Kishanganj, 152mm), Jhanjharpur (127mm), Mohammadganj (113mm), Birpur (100.6mm), Lalganj (Vaishali, 90.8mm), Gaya (90.2mm), Jainagar (90mm), Baltara (Khagaria, 84.4mm), Amour (86mm), Manjhi (69.8mm), Bachhara (Begusarai, 59.1mm) and Sripalpur (55.2 mm). Meanwhule, despite the flood threat, the widespread rainfall came as a relief to farmers, particularly those cultivating paddy. Rainfall between June 1 and July 30 had been 30% below normal, hampering agricultural activities. WRD principal secretary Santosh Kumar Mall had on Saturday asked all executive engineers to consult with farmers in their respective regions to understand their immediate problems and requirements. He also instructed that water from canal distributaries be made available to the tail ends for irrigation in command areas. Mall said, "The normal rainfall for the period from June 1 to July 30 in the state is 489mm, but only 343 mm was received – 30% less than normal." He, however, assured that farmers' suggestions, particularly regarding the desilting of canals and the removal of weeds and trees from canal beds and slopes, would be acted upon. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Friendship Day wishes , messages and quotes !
Daily Express
01-08-2025
- Daily Express
Crackdown on littering near Grand Merdeka Mall
Published on: Friday, August 01, 2025 Published on: Fri, Aug 01, 2025 By: Sidney Skinner Text Size: 10 litterbugs, like the one above, were taken to task by SWMD staff in this part of Bandar Sierra Boulevard 1. City Hall is cracking down on those who dispose of their rubbish indiscriminately along the road leading to a Manggatal commercial centre. This action follows feedback about the refuse strewn about near the planter boxes and on the pavement beside the Grand Merdeka Mall. A Manggatal resident bemoaned the bits of litter – including cigarette butts, empty styrofoam food containers and plastic cups – left behind along a section of Bandar Sierra Boulevard 1 by many patrons of the night-market held outside the Mall. The individual provided Hotline with the pertinent details which were forwarded to the agency. A spokesman for its Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD) warned that anyone caught throwing their refuse haphazardly on the road-shoulder beside the Mall risked being served with a compound for as much as RM500 under City Hall's Anti-Litter By-Laws 1984 (Amendment 2005). 'We are aware that some nightmarket-goers have the habit of sitting against the planter boxes to enjoy the food and drinks they have bought at the stalls,' he said. 'Others sit in their vehicles to do this. 'Whatever the case, these individuals should dispose of their garbage responsibly in bins and not leave the common area in a mess. 'If they fail to be more civic minded, when it comes to getting rid of their rubbish, and are witnessed littering, then we will not hesitate to take them to task.' He said SWMD officers met with a staff from the Mall's management, who oversees the nightmarket, to discuss what had been transpiring there on Wednesday. 'Our personnel were made to understand that the part of the compound, where the nightmarket is held, is cleaned up daily after the stalls close.' To prove that it means business, City Hall penalised 11 litterbugs during a random check carried out along this part of Bandar Sierra Boulevard 1 between 4.00pm and 8.00pm later that same day. 'We will continue to monitor the goings-on around the road and the Mall from time to time.' He said those who repeatedly disregarded the agency's calls to refrain from littering in the common areas could wind up having legal action taken against them. 'They will become liable to a fine for as much as RM 10,000, if they are found guilty in court.' The spokesman said City Hall had been coming down hard on littering violations in a bid to get the public to take a more active role in keeping its rating-area clean. 'It is not just up to our garbage collectors and street-sweepers to keep the commercial properties around our rating-area looking presentable and pleasing to the eye, especially to the many first time visitors from abroad. 'It is the collective responsibility of everyone who lives, works and frequents these locales.' The agency collected a total of RM1,700 in the on-the-spot compounds from 85 wrongdoers, including those at the Mall, as part of its 'Ops Bersih' in July, according to him. 'The Mall had the most offenders when it came to areas inspected outside the City. 'This was followed by Inanam, where nine errant individuals were nabbed. Six were taken to task around Manggatal.' Between four to five SWMD inspectors in plain clothes carried out 34 separate inspections between July 1 and July 31. Besides Grand Merdeka Mall, Inanam and Manggatal, the Department's team also went to Damai Plaza, Likas Plaza, Mini Putrajaya, Kingfisher Plaza, the Indah Permai shops and the Salut Commercial Centre, according to the spokesman. When it came to the City, he said checks were made around the Bandaran Berjaya shophouses, as well as those around Kg Air and Sinsuran. On top of this, checks were also made of the common areas around Centre Point Sabah and Gaya Street. 'The highest number of litterbugs was nabbed around Centre Point (11), followed by Kg Air (nine) and Bandaran Berjaya (eight).' * Follow us on our official WhatsApp channel and Telegram for breaking news alerts and key updates! * Do you have access to the Daily Express e-paper and online exclusive news? Check out subscription plans available. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express's Telegram channel. Daily Express Malaysia
The Guardian
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Reform's tales of wasteland Britain won't work. There's a far larger market for hope
Sheer joy. That's how it felt watching England's Lionesses romping gleefully across the pitch after their victory in Basel – not just because they won but because of the way they did it, with an exuberance and a resilience and an obvious love of playing together that makes them irresistible to watch. That 65,000 people came out in the drizzle for their homecoming parade down the Mall was testament not just to the deserved new popularity of women's football but also to the longing for a national event that, even if only briefly, made us feel cheerful, expansive, as if all things were possible. So it's interesting that for her summer beach reading Rachel Reeves picked Abundance, the American journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's blueprint for the more permanent rebuilding of hope and joy. It's a pro-growth, techno-optimist rallying cry for progressives to reinvent themselves as purveyors of plenty and good times in contrast to the right's crabby, mean-spirited 'scarcity mindset' – which revolves around the belief that there isn't enough good stuff to go round and therefore the priority is snatching it back off immigrants or the poor or whatever bewildered former ally Donald Trump accuses of ripping America off. Klein and Thompson argue convincingly that for decades western consumers have been fobbed off with an abundance of stuff we fleetingly want – fast fashion, cheap flights, more streamed content than anyone has time to watch – but a paucity of stuff we actually need, such as affordable homes near where the good jobs are, or cheap green energy. Where the authors will divide the room, however, is by claiming that's partly down to years of liberal politicians attaching well-meaning strings to public building projects, from environmental protections to procurement rules to US zoning laws for housing, which although noble in intent collectively make it impossible to build. It was Reeves's jolting recent description of red tape as a 'boot on the neck' of business that first made me wonder if she'd read the fervently deregulatory Abundance. Though it focuses on the California housing crisis, there are enough relatable stories – the nimby neighbours fighting affordable homes because they'd prefer more car parking, or the decades wasted failing to build a high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco – for it to have done the rounds at Westminster and among Australian progressives too. Like all snappy bestsellers, it's sometimes glib. Klein and Thompson talk a great game about facing up to reality – if you can't have speedy housebuilding and generous protection for bat and newt habitats, say, which do you want most? – yet place enormous faith in the magical ability of still-unproven technologies to solve problems without creating new ones. Their vision of a utopia involving driverless cars, lab-grown meat and bounteous vegetable crops from so-called vertical farms (essentially giant greenhouses powered by renewable energy) would sound more convincing if it weren't for horror stories about autonomous driving or the struggle to make vertical farming remotely viable in Britain. But there's something undeniably appealing at its heart. Plenty is an innately American idea, at home in the land of bottomless refills and vast open skies and permanently reaching after more, bigger, better. But from a British left perspective, what's interesting is its relationship with altruism. Scarcity makes people selfish, anxious, distrusting of others and prone to hoarding whatever they've got: think of shoppers fighting over loo rolls in lockdown. But in times of abundance, we relax, becoming more generous. Klein and Thompson's proposals for a 21st-century era of plenty – build lots of affordable housing and prioritise super-cheap clean energy to lower household bills and unleash industrial innovation – aren't exactly revelatory to a Labour government already committed to most of this (though in Britain some might add the need to reform an electricity market where prices are still artificially pegged to gas). What Labour hasn't yet nailed, however, is the emotional framing that turns rather worthy but dull-sounding infrastructure projects into the genuinely exciting makings of a better life. Somewhere in abundance theory are the glimmerings of a story that brings together otherwise disparate policies and people. What Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner, the two natural abundance politicians on the cabinet's soft left, share with those on the technocratic right like chief AI cheerleader Peter Kyle, is mostly a mindset: an ebullience, an enthusiasm, and a refusal to see everything as hopeless that matters to progressive parties, because they're in the business of hope. Never more so, arguably, than when the right is deep in the business of doom. Nigel Farage's great appeal to his followers used to be the fact that he liked a drink and a laugh; that he was so obviously enjoying himself. But lately his party has begun to sound bitter, nihilistic, oddly hysterical. Claiming that Britain is on the verge of societal collapse plays well on X, already awash with nonsense about no-go zones in Birmingham and civil war in Europe, but perhaps less well in daylight. Britain has big problems, many of them deep seated. But it's still a country where people wash their cars in suburban driveways on a Sunday afternoon, not a post-apocalyptic wasteland where we're all one step away from barbecuing rats for supper. There's undeniably a market for politicians wallowing angrily in dreams of a better yesterday. But I suspect there's still a bigger one, out there in the rain, waiting to catch sight of a better tomorrow. Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
Metro
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Lionesses gave us a world of joy – try to block it out and we'll sing louder
A sea of fans turned out to celebrate England's European champions in London (Picture: PA) I managed not to cry when the little boy in a Leah Williamson England shirt toddled smilingly towards me on Tuesday lunchtime, but it was close. The Lionesses trophy parade had just wrapped outside Buckingham Palace with ecstatic dancing from England manager Sarina Wiegman to a Burna Boy set. Crowds were filtering out in search of sustenance. Streams of England, Arsenal, Manchester United, Sunderland and even Tottenham strips thronged all the way down to Victoria station. Williamson shirts were big on the Mall, Russo and Kelly popular, a Beever-Jones sat behind me at the station. But actually it was the widely represented Lineker and Kane shirts that made me catch my breath. Fans of men's football who had come – some as families, many just with mates – to recognise England's back-to-back European champions in the heart of the capital. The collective giddiness in central London felt like Marathon day or even the 2012 Olympics. Strangers chatting, exulting, politely moving aside to enable better CHAMPIONS BUS photos. Kate enjoying the parade (Picture: Kate Mason) The fascinating thing about fandoms in 2025 is how they are increasingly intense and increasingly siloed. Lioness lore is made mainstream as the women win on bigger and better-broadcast stages but in corners of the internet it is obsessed over year-round. Equally, it is still possible to exist and be almost completely unaware of the devotion these players inspire. Assuming you weren't trying to walk to work in Mayfair on Tuesday, that is. All of which means we may think of Lioness fans as being exclusively girls and young women. And it is true that the Sweet Carolines sung up and down the Mall were less bassy than I'm accustomed to. Young fans are core to the women's football movement and that's smart, because they are crucial when you are building community. But at the parade I counted every age, creed and colour of person. The enthusiastic men were more than represented. And yet it is not the many voices of those supportive male members of the public we usually hear in the conversation around the women's game. Which does us all a disservice. We know the feelings of the men we tend to hear from when it comes to women's football. Their theory is: football is definitely a man thing, we must act when women claim a right to it. A delighted Sarina Wiegman sings with Burna Boy at the parade (Picture: Getty Images) Watching the final in the pub on Sunday, one guy nearby overcame the threat with the comfortable, decades-old expedient of advising the girls on screen of how they should play, in a tone varying from patronage to incredulity, with rolled-eyed glances towards likely allies. The LBC caller who went viral demanding the world stop 'shoving women's football down our throats' asserted that his 'wife' agreed with him that women were unwatchable, their voices unlistenable. Hearing these men it was clear they feel they speak for the majority. Disrespecting women is still safe ground. But as Tuesday shows, they do not. Chloe Kelly and Michelle Agyemang enjoy the taste of success (Picture: Getty Images) And gazing around, surrounded by fans, eyes brimming yet again, I could not help compare it with the disdain I've seen heaped on women's football – not just this week but in my 30 years of loving it. And I couldn't think of a stronger counter to those voices who must even now know they have wasted their time. The joy in that space was a solid thing. It was passed around, shared – and magnified. Sure the audio didn't really work, meaning Heather Small's rendition of Proud was largely lost. But some at the front could hear it and picked up the melody and passed it back in one joyful wave. That's what the Lionesses bring: joy, self-confidence and, yes, the aura of success. If you want to shut yourself out from that, that's okay, how much happiness you'd like in your life is up to you. If you want to stand in its way? Well, we will just sing louder. Seven thousand in 2022's parade, 65,000 strong in 2025. In future? Who can dare to imagine. Arrow MORE: Labour's school guidance is Section 28 all over again for LGBTQ+ people Arrow MORE: I was burned by 'check-in chicken' – heed my warning
