The 30-minute CD, shot from January 28 onwards, takes the viewers through several villages of Kutch including Navagam, Lakadia, Aadhoi, Kharvi.

The video leaves one shocked with lasting images of destruction, of relief workers from across the world working to excavate dead bodies and the villages turning into rubble. This short film has various lasting images of a clock in a school with its hands frozen at 8.47 am, of the destroyed Jesal-Toral Samadhi at Anjar, of the ruins of the Swaminarayan temple and historical monuments in Bhuj, and of shattered tombs, temples and palaces across the region.

Vagad Trust has been involved in medical work for social causes since 1992. In the last nine years it helped the cause of several people affected by tragedies. Volunteers of Vagad Trust were amongst the first to reach Kutch and help the victims through timely support and medical treatment.

The CD is available at various shops all over the country against a small donation of Rs 100. It can also be obtained by sending a draft favouring `Vagad Medical Relief Trust', payable at Mumbai, 41 Chandraprabha, Nehru Road, Ville Parle East, Mumbai.

Medicines emerge as a substitute to heroin
A cocktail of easily available pharmaceutical drugs has emerged as a popular substitute to heroin among drug users in the country, a study has warned.With stricter controls on the movement and availability of brown sugar and other costly narcotics, more and more drug addicts are taking to easily available pharmaceutical drugs like Avil, Diazepam and Morphine which are used as injections further exposing them to the risk of AIDS, says a study conducted by an NGO, Sharan.

Sharing of needles by injecting drug users (IDU) has put them at risk of contracting many infections including HIV, said Luke Samson, regional coordinator, India and Nepal (Economic Rehabilitation Program for Drug Users in Asia).

Already the percentage of HIV Sero prevalence among IDUs is ballooning alarmingly with a high of 80 per cent in Imphal, 15-19.5 per cent in Chennai, 7.43 in Mumbai, 2 per cent in Calcutta and 44.5 per cent in the Capital among a sample of IDUs tested in the joint study between Sharan and John Hopkins University in five cities of the country.

MP to review social security pension scheme
THE Madhya Pradesh government has set up a state-level coordinating committee for review of social security pension schemes.

Deputy chief minister Jamuna Devi is its president and district level committees, headed by presidents of Zilla Panchayats have also been constituted, an official release said last week.

Ms Devi has directed that the meetings of the district-level committees for monitoring of social security pension schemes should be held on the same day of the district planning committee meeting.

She gave these directions at the meeting of state-level coordinating committee last week when she also issued directives for conducting special inquiry into the disbursement of destitute pension in Bhopal and Jabalpur.Ms Devi also gave directions for inquiring into the complaints of delay in distribution of social security pension and excluding genuine persons from its cover.

The deputy chief minister said that the representatives of Panchayat Raj Institutions and urban civic bodies should personally ensure that in their wards all the eligible persons received pension.