Nine moths after the thrashing it received in the Assembly elections, the CPM leadership has undertaken a purge within. It has dropped 13 of its veterans from the West Bengal state committee, three of them several-term MPs, from key posts on grounds of “anti-party activities” or age and health. Party insiders say the exercise was a reflection of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee asserting himself with the party’s state unit. Such a drive had,...

West Bengal: An agrarian crisis looms over the State as farmers commit suicide in spite of a bumper crop. THE topic of suicide figured repeatedly in Safar Molla's conversations with his neighbours a few days before his death. The 18-year-old marginal farmer from Kaltikuri village in Bardhaman district's Bhatar block talked about it quite casually, in fact even jocularly. Everybody in the village knew he was up to his neck in...

Agrarian crisis continued in Bengal with farmers continuing to commit suicide after failing to sell their crops. The latest such incident was reported from Malda district in North Bengal, police said. Dayal Chandra Burman a middle-aged peasant committed suicide on Sunday morning at Gajole block in Malda district after he failed to repay Rs 30,000 taken as loan from moneylenders for paddy cultivation. He failed to sell his crops for the...

-CNN-IBN Five more infants died at Malda Sadar Hospital on Friday, taking the death toll in one week to 37. "37 infants have died since the last seven days. Three infants and two children have died in the last 24 hours," reports said. Most of the children have died after they were referred from rural hospitals in critical state, the hospital said. The babies, who were born underweight and suffered from broncho pneumonia, were...

A surprise visit to Malda district hospital turned out to be a shock for child and women welfare minister Sabitri Mitra on Sunday. "Only God can help us," she cried, after seeing two babies die before her eyes. Mitra spent nearly an hour at the hospital shooing cats from the maternity ward and trying to make sense of the chaos. The beds - and floors - were overflowing with patients. There...