-Hindustan Times First came demonetisation. Then, as banknotes slowly returned to circulation, a crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses in the state wrecked the local market for cattle. In Ilyas Khan’s eyes shine the pride of a grand past that give way to the clouds of an uncertain future. Two decades ago, the Thursday cattle market he runs in western Uttar Pradesh’s Banat saw traders troop in from faraway Delhi and Bihar. Today, the...

-Hindustan Times But the Uttar Pradesh government isn’t panicking yet, and believes it can get things under control with tough measures, including encounters. Lucknow: A petrol pump owner looted; a trader murdered; jewellery shops robbed; a political leader killed; a constable shot; four members of a family -- including two girls -- hacked; a police sub-inspector beaten up; caste clashes erupt. Glance through local newspapers of Uttar Pradesh, and the headlines would be...

-Hindustan Times Fatehgarh Sahib: He owns four acres of land, farms 20 acres more on lease, and has a debt of Rs 10 lakh. Gurmukh Singh, 44, is one of better-to-do farmers of Pandrali, a quiet, well-groomed village in Fatehgarh Sahib district with several newly-built houses, smooth streets and girls on scooters. It’s a picture that could well be captioned ‘prosperous Punjab’. But the genteel façade hides the struggles of the...

-Hindustan Times Delhi relies heavily on the polluted Yamuna, neighbouring Haryana for its water supply. The groundwater table is also fast depleting. Natural and artificial water bodies in the city are being targeted by land sharks as well as local residents who have turned them into garbage dumps. New Delhi: More than half of Delhi’s 1000 water bodies have either dried up, encroached upon or acquired for infrastructure development. That is...

-TheWire.in Unable to fix its public distribution system, the state government humiliates the poor by marking their houses. New Delhi: From being in denial over violence in her state to allegedly ‘using an army of paid trolls’ to defend herself on Twitter, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons in the past few weeks. This latest news from Dausa district will not exactly help Raje’s...