-The Times of India The Congress moved with alacrity on Tuesday to put the stamp of its "hand" on 'direct cash transfers', calling it an election promise fulfilled and lining up Rahul Gandhi to lead the celebrations in the build-up to the launch of what it sees as a "game-changing" scheme. Finance minister P Chidambaram and rural development minister Jairam Ramesh chose the Congress party platform to announce the launch of the...

-The Times of India VADODARA/ ANAND: Agri-clinic-cum-agri-business centres that address the needs of farming families should be set up across the country. Father of India's Green Revolution professor M S Swaminathan advocated this on Monday. Eminent geneticist and member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha, professor Swaminathan said this while delivering the first Dr Verghese Kurien Memorial Lecture at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA).  IRMA has constituted the memorial lecture series which...

-The Economic Times Congress is hoping to reap political dividends from its move to provide direct cash transfer to the beneficiaries of welfare schemes just as it believes it did in the previous elections from the rural employment guarantee scheme. Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, who, along with finance minister P Chidambaram, was deputed by the party to explain the details of the ambitious scheme on Tuesday, termed the initiative "a...

-The Economic Times CHENNAI: Scientists of IIT-Kanpur have thrown the kitchen sink at a high-tech solution to a messy problem: How to keep the world's largest railway network clean and prevent corrosion of lines when train toilets unload waste directly on the tracks. Bio-toilets developed by the Indian Railways and Defence Research and development Organization have earned praise from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but IIT scientists say they are neither environment-friendly nor...

-The Hindu A recent survey in the Sunderbans region of West Bengal reveals an alarming trend of rising mental health problem among women Everyday, when Badal, a sturdy young man of Sunderbans returns home at dusk, he finds his mother, Kamala, sitting placidly in the verandah, staring into the distance with strangely unseeing eyes. The house, otherwise, is abuzz with activity. His daughter is bringing in the cows, his sons are clamouring...