PUNE: Bandya Pashte, 28, has been cultivating paddy on his family’s five-acre plot in village Veravli in the Konkan, Maharashtra’s coastal strip for about a decade. Last year, though, he threw in the towel because farming is not remunerative and lacks social status. Bandya has since migrated to the city to work as a driver, earning more than he did as a farmer. While Bandya is unaware of the National...

TIRUNELVELI: Following complaints of moneylenders occupying some of the houses at the Samaththuvapuram in Valliyoor, Collector M. Jayaraman has ordered to check the genuineness of the occupants. The Samaththuvapuram has 100 houses, a community hall, playground, Ration Shop, a park and other basic facilities. As each house in this colony is situated on five cents of land, close to the National Highway, Government Hospital and Tamil Nadu Housing Board apartments, its...

At the second-floor office of 5th Pillar, a three-year-old Chennai-based non-governmental organization (NGO), 40-year-old Vijay Anand vociferously evangelizes to a crowd of 25 people on a Saturday evening. He urges the group—a mix of students and working professionals who are there to learn about how to get information on public officials—to fight corruption and shame corrupt government workers by offering the zero- rupee note that contains the promise to neither...

In an attempt to control the rising prices of rice and wheat, the State Government has decided to sell them at Rs. 17 and Rs. 14.70 a kg, respectively, through its cooperative societies. Minister for Food and Civil Supplies H. Halappa told presspersons here on Wednesday that each family coming under above or below poverty line categories was eligible to purchase 25 kg of these commodities at a time. Identity cards...

Insufficiency and prescribing medicines from outside continues  CRM draws attention to ‘irrational’ use and non-availability of essential medicines Supplies are mostly top-down, based on availability instead of being demand-based No State provides free medicines to below the poverty line (BPL) patients under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). “The insufficiency of drugs and thereby the imperative of prescribing medicines from outside continue widely. This could also be linked to insufficiency of understanding...