Dispute over payment of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( NREGA) scheme on Tuesday LED to bloodshed in Murshidabad's Domkal the home turf of state panchayat minister Anisur Rahman. The tiff over the trivial issue took one life and left one injured speaking volumes for the underlying tension in the rural pockets of Bengal where political rivals have become used to settling all disputes with arms. On Tuesday morning, CPM-backed goons...

It spreads across five countries including Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Africa and Bhutan, apart from a total of 34 of the 71 districts in Uttar Pradesh. It involves over 450 Class-I government officials and another 800 middle and lower rung subordinates apart from some 10,000 private entities and may require 5,000 FIRs to cover the scam in totality. The foodgrain scam of Uttar Pradesh has emerged as a strong contender for...

A man, crawling on all fours, is searching for something under a tree on a hot summer’s day. A curious passerby stops and asks: “What are you looking for?” The man replies: “I’ve lost my watch.” The passerby asks: “Are you sure it fell near this tree?” The answer: “It’s cooler looking in the shade”.Governments work something like this. They do what they think is easier to do rather than...

Pawan Goenka noticed something unusual last year—tractor sales were climbing even though India had its worst monsoon in more than three decades and farm output dropped 2.8% in the three months to December last fiscal. The umbilical cord that tied rainfall patterns and tractor sales seemed to have been ruptured. The president of auto and tractor maker Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd offers an interesting explanation to this puzzle: growing labour shortages...

They have done much more than uplift their own lives. Members of the city-based  Self-Employed Women's Association (Sewa), it appears, will now be playing an instrumental role in the empowerment of women farmers in Africa! It seems likely that India and the US will together replicate Sewa's agriculture model in Africa, for the betterment of the women farmers there. A discussion to this effect took place during US president Barack...