PALNAR/SAMELI (DANTEWADA): They sat watching cartoons on TV a day after their mother was arrested in faraway Delhi on charges of acting as a conduit/courier for Maoists.  While adivasi school teacher Soni Sori faces police interrogation in Chhattisgarh for her role in an alleged pay off by Essar group to Maoists, her children, Muskaan (12), Deependera (10) and Amrita (6) are at their uncle Ramdev's house in Palnar village for a...

-The Hindustan Times   Do these people look well-off to you? The planning commission puts them above poverty line. Basant Kumar, 51  Shopkeeper  Kusumpur Pahari slum,  Vasant Vihar, Delhi Daily expense: Rs 53   Basant Kumar runs a little shop in a slum in Vasant Vihar, home to over two lakh migrant families. He feeds and clothes his wife and three children on his meagre earnings of Rs5,000 a month. He also works odd-jobs, in construction or with...

The Jharkhand state MGNREGA council has increased the honorarium to nearly 6,000 contract employees working for implementation of the central scheme, putting an additional burden of over Rs 1 crore on the state exchequer. However, the government said the extra load would be borne by the central share of funds. The proposal of the rural development department was approved by the state council in its third meeting here on Tuesday. The...

Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen. His name, year of birth and address were recorded. A worker guided Mr. Gangar’s rough fingers to the glowing green surface of a scanner to record his fingerprints. He peered into an iris scanner shaped like binoculars that...

In the current hullabaloo about the lok pal bill and the Anna agitation, one question has frequently been raised, both by protagonists of the Congress and the government and by constitutionalists and legal experts: however laudable the goals of Anna and his supporters, aren’t the methods adopted by them illegitimate? Doesn’t a fast unto death amount to blackmail of the legislature? Isn’t it an attempt by the unelected to usurp...