Blood spilt in the Hashimpura massacre and riots in 1987 remain fresh for survivors Nearly 25 years old, the black-and-white photograph of his son’s body has begun to fade but Jamaluddin Ansari’s anger has not waned. Having lost his eldest son Qamaruddin in the 1987 Hashimpura massacre in Meerut, the 75-year-old still awaits closure. “All prosecution witnesses have said what they had to state at the court but it keeps...

The Supreme Court today described the midnight crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s supporters at Ramlila Maidan last Summer as a glaring example of the “trust deficit” between the government and the people, and blamed both the police and the Baba for neglecting the common man caught in the brick-batting between them.   The people who were “rudely” woken up at the maidan became the “ultimate sufferers” of the showdown in the dark between...

Faulty procurement, rising farm inputs force West Bengal farmers to commit suicide LONG known as farmer friendly, West Bengal is now making headlines for farmers’ suicides. Reportedly 31 farmers, including landless farm labourers and small traders of agriculture produce, in the state took their lives between October last year and January. Twenty-one of the 31 deaths are from the state’s rice bowl Burdwan district. And this is probably a reason the spate...

-The Times of India   Can Jairam Ramesh become the next president of the World Bank? Unlikely, but in the steady drumbeat of the demand that the next World Bank president must come from the developing world, the rural development minister’s name is being heard alongside several other competent names from the wrong side of the poverty divide.    An independent website, worldbankpresident.org, which is running a poll on who should be the next...

-PTI The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council today projected 3 per cent growth for the farm sector in 2011-12 buoyed by record grains output, strong growth in horticulture and animal husbandry sectors. Last year, the agriculture sector had grown by 7 per cent. "The Council expects that in combination with the strong trend growth in horticulture and in the animal husbandry sectors, the overall farm sector GDP growth for 2011-12 will average 3...