Sheikh Sajed Ali doesn’t dare leave the Jamshed Ali Bhawan party office in West Midnapore’s Keshpur. It’s the only refuge the sharecropper has been able to find since the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, or CPM, got wiped out in the recent assembly elections by the Trinamool Congress and its allies. Ali is terrified to venture out. He says his family is being asked to pay `2...

-The Business Standard   Five political parties stage protest against land acquisition Tension prevailed on Monday at the proposed Posco project site at Gobindpur village under Dhinkia panchayat as ten platoons of armed police conducted flag march ostensibly to create a fear psychosis among the local people ahead of the land acquisition process at trouble-ToRn Dhinkia panchayat. The situation is going to very critical at Gobindpur as the activists of Posco Pratirodha Sangram Samiti...

-The Business Standard The Jagatsinghpur district administration has decided to serve notice within next couple of days on the villagers of Polang, Bhuyianpal and Noliasahi who have not demolished their betel vines to clear the obstacle at the proposed Posco site for sand leveling and construction of boundary wall for the project. Sources said many villagers of Polang, Gadkujang, Noliasahi, Bhuiyanpal, Bayanalkanda and Nuagaon, who have been identified as anti-Posco activists, have...

The current perception that cash transfers can replace public provision of basic goods and services and become a catch-all solution for poverty reduction is false. Where cash transfers have helped to reduce poverty, they have added to public provision, not replaced it. For crucial items like food, direct provision protects poor consumers from rising prices and is part of a broader strategy to ensure domestic supply. Problems like targeting errors...

India’s increasing wealth and improving literacy are apparently contributing to a national crisis of “missing girls,” with the number of sex-selective abortions up sharply among more affluent, educated families during the past two decades, according to a new study. The study found the problem of sex-selective abortions of girls has spread steadily across India after once being confined largely to a handful of conservative northern states. Researchers also found that women...