-The Indian Express   By the ferocity of her reaction to a weak cartoon, Mamata Banerjee proves her detractors right Mamata Banerjee has made political satire redundant. Her exaggerated, distorted reaction to a cartoon about herself makes her look like a tinpot tyrant. Was the cartoon defamatory? Only to the extent that any political cartoon is — it referenced Satyajit Ray’s detective classic Sonar Kella, and showed Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy making...

The time has come for optimal pricing of water and power to prevent an unlimited pumping of groundwater and aid better coordination amongst competing demands for the scarce resource, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here on Tuesday. Dr. Singh's observations come at a time when there is a debate on the pricing of water and privatisation of services in the sector. The Ministry of Water Resources is working on a reforms-oriented...

A Gujarat court today convicted 23 of the 46 accused in a 2002 riot case in which a mob torched a house where four families had taken shelter, killing 23 people. The court in Anand district will hand down the sentences on April 12 in the so-called “Ode massacre” or “Pirawali massacre”, one of the nine cases probed by the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team (SIT). This is the third Gujarat riot...

It would be great if the enthusiasm on the financial inclusion agenda gets a pause from the frantic do-gooders . Too many people appear to be enthusiastic about serving the poor - and the kindness is killing. Back in 1956, we discovered that cooperatives were a great instrument to reach out to the poor. These were peoples' institutions, local and would be responsive to the problems of their members. A set of...

-PTI   Mamata had said that co-operative banks would not be allowed to attach properties of farmers for loan recovery in cases of default Refinance institution Nabard today said it would oppose any amendment to West Bengal cooperative Societies Act of, 2006 as suggested recently by state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. "If the West Bengal government goes ahead with amending the Act without informing Nabard, then we will oppose it," National Bank for Agriculture...