Dispur has hiked the salaries of all doctors serving in rural areas with additional incentives for those posted in the most remote and underdeveloped char or riverine areas of the state. Health and family welfare minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today said the monthly salaries of doctors serving under the National Rural Health Mission has been increased from the existing Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,500. He said similarly the salary of dentists had...

Over the past decade, as crops have failed year after year, 200,000 farmers have killed themselves Naryamaswamy Naik went to the cupboard and took out a tin of pesticide. Then he stood before his wife and children and drank it. "I don't know how much he had borrowed. I asked him, but he wouldn't say," Sugali Nagamma said, her tiny grandson playing at her feet. "I'd tell him: don't worry, we...

Showing its concern for farmers, the Mayawati government on Wednesday decided to implement the amended national agriculture insurance scheme (NAIS) and the all weather-based crop insurance scheme from the curRent sowing season. Both these schemes involve an expenditure of Rs 900 lakh. A decision to this effect was taken at a cabinet meeting presided over by chief minister Mayawati here on Wednesday. The NAIS, according to an official release, will be implemented...

Maoist leader was himself charged with sedition only as an after-thought Narayan Sanyal is a 74-year-old man with white hair parted to one side and fibromatosis in both hands. His arrest memo notes that he wears dentures, has spots on his body and smokes cigarettes. “My health is not going well, arthritis is a new thing catching up, age is telling,” he writes in a letter addressed to a ‘Dear...

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...