If home minister P Chidambaram’s recent letter to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is any indication, it has taken the Union home ministry seven years to realise that arming civilians to fight Naxalites is a bad idea. How much longer will it take for them to realise that the current paramilitary-based approach in Chhattisgarh is similarly bound to fail? From 2003 onwards, the home ministry has followed a policy of...

If present political trends and shifts in Andhra Pradesh intensify, the State could see an election within a year. And not just over Telangana. When Chandrababu Naidu sits on a hunger fast for suffering farmers, you know something is afoot in Andhra Pradesh. Excessive rains have devastated the crops in the State. And losses have been enormous. But a farmer losing over Rs.15,000 on an acre of paddy will get less...

In a show of unanimity, the government and the Opposition parties have decided to set aside the question hour and take up a short discussion on farmers' problems on the opening day of the short session of the Legislature beginning here on Friday.The Assembly session will last till December 16, that is sittings for just six days. At a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) held here on Thursday,...

The ambitious Polavaram project, the multi-purpose project proposed across the Godavari for making optimum utilisation of water going waste into the sea, is mired in problems. The much-talked about project, aimed at stabilising the century-old Krishna delta and irrigating over 7 lakh acres in the upland areas of East and West Godavari districts, is dogged by uncertainty since it became a bone of contention between different regions and faced with litigation....

The Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) has decided to purchase stocks from farmers, who have been on a warpath for two months demanding a higher support price for their crop. Sources said bowing to pressure from farmers and political parties, the Union government cleared the decks for launching purchase centres by CCI in the state. Field-level officials at CCI, however, are still wary about the arrival of poor quality of stocks...