-The Hindu Indentured labour may be a forgotten part of our colonial economic history but Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh are still sending ‘Girmitya' to toil in distant lands The descendants of indentured labourers, who migrated from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to erstwhile colonies, recently met at The Hague in the Netherlands to commemorate 140 years of migration - perpetuated through a system popularly known as ‘Girmit.' They gathered from all...

-The Indian Express Trendsetters & tweakers Act one Chhattisgarh already has a food security law in place. It became last December the first state to pass a food security bill, which covers several sections not under existing schemes. The Act makes food entitlement a right and depriving anyone of that an offence. If PDS grains, for instance, are being diverted, the officials involved will face penal provisions. The Act also seeks to empower women...

-Live Mint/ Bloomberg Conflicts between industry and farmers getting worse as water becomes more and more scarce Sachin Ingale slipped out of his family's two-room, white-painted mud hut about 4pm and walked into their farm field where the 22-year-old took a deep swig of pesticide from a plastic bottle. He died later that evening. Four months later, the mercury is pushing 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in his village in...

-Frontline   But in Modi's Gujarat the difference between development and darkness is all too visible to those who care to see. NARENDRA MODI may have won three consecutive elections and ruled Gujarat for more than a decade after he was posted there almost as a night watchman, to borrow a cricketing expression. He may have mobilised a massive fan following that is shouting to catapult him into the Prime Minister's post,...

-The Hindu   Locals allege Coca-Cola is to blame for the rising water crisis in the area Varanasi: Holding it responsible for the aggravation of water crisis in the area, village councils here have opposed Coca-Cola's plans of expanding its existing bottling plant at Mehdiganj, 20 km from here, and called on the government to stop the company's current groundwater extraction. Fifteen panchayats or village councils here have asked the Central Ground Water Authority...