-The Economic Times Rains in the last few days across the country excluding the southern peninsula have affected the standing wheat crop. Harvesting has already been delayed by a fortnight in Punjab, the wheat bowl of the country. State governments are advising farmers not to bring the moisture-laden wheat to market yards for sale.  "At isolated places, there are instances of water-logging. It will not impact production with harvesting at its peak...

In unprecedented action, a senior professor of Jadavpur University and the secretary of a housing society in Kolkata had to spend Thursday night in jail for forwarding an e-mail that contained a cartoon featuring Trinamool Congress leaders Mamata Banerjee, Mukul Roy and Dinesh Trivedi. They were charged with defamation and outraging the modesty of a woman.   Top officers in the Kolkata police confirmed that there was no parallel in the state...

-The Indian Express   By the ferocity of her reaction to a weak cartoon, Mamata Banerjee proves her detractors right Mamata Banerjee has made political satire redundant. Her exaggerated, distorted reaction to a cartoon about herself makes her look like a tinpot tyrant. Was the cartoon defamatory? Only to the extent that any political cartoon is — it referenced Satyajit Ray’s detective classic Sonar Kella, and showed Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy making...

-The Hindustan Times It’s like having a stomachache because of rage. I think I can’t express it with any better idiom. I’m virtually at a loss of words after hearing the news of Ambikesh Mahapatra’s arrest this morning. It has left a bad taste in my mouth. What is this? Shame on the state government, I’m aghast. Not even in my wildest fantasy could I imagine such a situation. Even an...

-The Telegraph Trinamul leaders in Singur today urged party MPs and MLAs to donate a month’s salary to help raise a fund for farmers who lost their land to the Tata Nano factory. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has time and again said that the 400 acres for which the farmers have refused to accept compensation would be returned to them but the government is engaged in legal tangle with Tata Motors since...