Construction on waterways should be banned: VK Singh

Union Minister Gen. (retd) VK Singh today said constructions that block waterways should not be allowed and opined that there is a need to train people in disaster management to tackle calamities like the floods in Jammu and Kashmir.
"Why only in northeast, all over India we need to train people in disaster management. The problem is there are many things which are not foreseen, like what happened in Kedarnath, everybody has to be connected. We can't allow constructions to come up which restrict waterways," said Singh, the Minister for Northeast Affairs.
He was commenting on the floods in J-K on the sidelines of an event here to launch an education campaign for rural areas with support from IT firms under the umbrella of MARG Academy.

Speaking on the need for rural development, Singh said, "I believe India lives in its villages and till the time these villages do not prosper, India cannot prosper. We may have an illuminated Mumbai or Delhi, but till the time even a remote village lacks facilities to move forward, the country cannot progress.
"It is now time we improved the conditions in India and worked in a way that outsiders come here and say the country has everything."
Singh also stressed on the need for providing employment to the youths and called for removal of the "barriers" which red tape has created.

"Everything is possible, the only need is to break some barriers and the barriers within government will also break.
"It will take some time though because it 'takes time to straighten a tail' (sic)," he said.