Even as the media celebrate the Mercedes Benz deal in the Marathwada region as a sign of “rural resurgence,” the latest data show that 17,368 farmers killed themselves in the year of the “resurgence.” When businessmen from Aurangabad in the backward Marathwada region bought 150 Mercedes Benz luxury cars worth Rs. 65 crore at one go in October, it grabbed media attention. The top public sector bank, State Bank of India,...
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17,368 farm suicides in 2009 by P Sainath
Worst figure in six years Total number of farm suicides since 1997 is 2,16,500 The share of Big 5 States remains very high at 10,765 At least 17,368 Indian farmers killed themselves in 2009, the worst figure for farm suicides in six years, according to data of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). This is an iNCRease of 1,172 over the 2008 count of 16,196. It brings the total farm suicides since 1997...
More »Docs in the dock in Noida land scam
Top ICMR scientists transferred Rs 70- crore tract of govt land to themselves to build society flats If Mumbai's Adarsh scam saw former service chiefs, politicos and bureaucrats help themselves to flats meant for Kargil heroes and war widows, a multi- crore realty fraud allegedly involving senior scientists has been unearthed in Noida.The CBI has homed in on the retired top brass of the Indian Council of Medical Research ( ICMR)...
More »'Dalits still being targetted in Uttar Pradesh'
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes Sunday rejected the Uttar Pradesh government's claims of bringing down incidents of violence against Dalits, terming them 'baseless and misleading'. The commission's newly-appointed chairman P.L. Punia said the state government released figures of only the first six months of this year, and atrocities against Dalits had actually registered a steep rise over the three-and-a-half year rule of Bahujan Samaj Party, according to statistics by National...
More »Haryana govt hikes land acquisition rates
In a major revision of the policy for rehabilitation & resettlement of landowners framed in 2005, the Haryana government has almost doubled the land acquisition rates in Gurgaon and substantially iNCReased those in other parts of the state. Announcing this at a Press conference here today, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that Haryana has been divided into five zones - instead of the earlier three - for the purpose...
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