A 32-year-old sharecropper hanged himself in Ausgram's Purbachati village on Wednesday morning, the third suicide in the drought-ridden region in less than two weeks. The news spread like wildfire through the scorched fields when, just 5km away, Trinamool Congress leaders Partha Chatterjee and Sisir Adhikary were consoling the families of the earlier two victims, Jitu Bagdi and Yunus Seikh. Gosai Patra quietly walked out of home at dawn and hanged...

Competing for praise and popularity is as common between Ministries as are turf wars. When officers from different Ministries get the rare opportunity to meet and discuss matters of shared concern, they behave like alert soldiers who are expected to fight for every inch of territory. I had an exposure to this phenomenon while working for a Planning Commission sub-committee on vocational education for skill development. Vocational and technical training...

IN A remote corner of Bahia state, in north-eastern Brazil, a vast new farm is springing out of the dry bush. Thirty years ago eucalyptus and pine were planted in this part of the cerrado (Brazil’s savannah). Native shrubs later reclaimed some of it. Now every field tells the story of a transformation. Some have been cut to a litter of tree stumps and scrub; on others, charcoal-makers have moved...

The Yamuna may be in spate near Delhi, states like Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu may be soaked wet and the Mithi river -- the lifeline of Mumbai -- could be flowing at the brim, but for people in the East and Northeast India the thirst for rain prolongs. They wait for the rain gods to smile upon them. Overall, this is one of the best monsoon India has...

The State Government has introduced a string of changes to the land acquisition process for industrial purposes, giving farmers the option to either take a stake in the industrialisation process or settle for fair compensation. All land being acquired across the State by the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board will be eligible for compensation at a rate higher than the market value and not the guidance value fixed by the revenue...