Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
THE road safety measures taken by Maharashtra Highway Police (MHP) are bearing fruits as the number of road accidents and fatalities is decreasing in the State. The State has recorded a drop of 8.47 per cent in all road accidents while road fatalities decreased by 3.56 per cent in year 2019. As per the statistics of road accidents from year 2016 to 2019, the State had recorded maximum 39,878 road accidents in year 2016. The number dropped to 36,056 in year 2017, to 35,717 in year 2018 and to 32,925 in year 2019. In effect, road accidents came down in Maharashtra by 17.43 per cent in last four years. Further analysis of the data showed that ‘without injury accidents’ played major role in bringing down graph of ‘overall accidents’ in the State. A total of 6,271 ‘without injury accidents’ were recorded in Maharashtra in year 2016 and the figure reduced to 3,568 with record drop of 43.10 per cent in year 2019. Maharashtra recorded 11,787 fatal accidents in year 2019 as compared to 12,098 i...