-Eastern Panorama   It’s been almost two months since a 6.9 magnitude earthquake left the Himalayan state of Sikkim devastated. Nine families of Ralak village in Tingchim Mangshilla Gram Panchayat in the North District of Sikkim are still living in make shift relief camps with the mothers cuddling their children under blankets to give them comfort and warmth in the cold November nights. As snow has already covered the mountains visible from...

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee took on the food ministry and publicly backed UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani's proposal to set up a new independent agency manned by professionals to computerise the public distribution system (PDS) as part of the reforms agenda and use the Aadhaar number as a base for the changes. Mukherjee was speaking at the meeting of state agriculture and food ministers in Delhi on Wednesday. TOI had earlier reported how...

-PTI Faced with subdued revenue mop-up and rising fiscal deficit, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today said he is "losing sleep" over mounting subsidy bill, which may cross Budget estimate by Rs 1 lakh crore in 2011-12. "As Finance Minister when I think of enormity of the subsidies to be provided, I lose my sleep. There is no doubt," said Mukherjee, who is engaged in the process of firming the Budget for 2012-13...

-IANS   Azamgarh: Amid the mushrooming convent schools, mosques still continue to be popular centres of learning at least up to the primary class level in Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh district. The trend is more common in cities and towns where Islamic primary schools are rare. There are more than 100 mosques in Azamgarh city and around 40 per cent offer primary education. A majority of students in mosques come from the Muslim community...

West Bengal: An agrarian crisis looms over the State as farmers commit suicide in spite of a bumper crop. THE topic of suicide figured repeatedly in Safar Molla's conversations with his neighbours a few days before his death. The 18-year-old marginal farmer from Kaltikuri village in Bardhaman district's Bhatar block talked about it quite casually, in fact even jocularly. Everybody in the village knew he was up to his neck in...