Farmers from across the state have decided to join hands against the land acquiSITion. Farmers` action committee has planned a joint meeting on June 30, which is likely to be attended by those from Gorakhpur of Fatehabad district, Agroha of Hisar and Panjokhra of Ambala district. Farmers of Agroha are on a hunger strike for the past 25 days and those of Gorakhpur are protesting for the past 315 days. Farmer...

When he drank poison on January 11, farmer Hargovind Harne’s run-down hut was bursting with freshly harvested paddy. Yet he was neck-deep in debt. Even the bottle of pesticide that he used to take his own life had been bought on credit, as the bill shows. His large stock of grain wasn’t the only puzzle in the 47-year-old’s suicide. Vidarbha is infamous for continuing suicides by cotton farmers but Harne grew food,...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

-PTI   After a not so pleasant experience of engaging with Anna Hazare's team in drafting of the Lok Pal Bill, the government says that there will be no such experiment in the future. HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, one of the key members of the joint committee for drafting the Lok Pal Bill, also maintains that it cannot be cited as a precedent. He says the draft of the bill will undergo changes...

On a muggy Saturday morning I was waiting on platform No.12 at the New Delhi Railway station to receive my family returning from Varanasi. The train was delayed by 40 minutes and I decided to stroll around the station to kill time. I had filth, stench and chaos for company. Suddenly, I saw a clump of about 15 people hemming something lying on the ground. I broke through the cordon...