A Central team, led by a senior official of the Union Agriculture Ministry, arrived in West Bengal on Wednesday and held a meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and three key Ministers and Departmental Secretaries before leaving for spot visits to the 11 districts declared drought-affected by the State government. Finance Minister Asim Kumar Dasgupta, who was also present at the meeting, told journalists at the Secretariat that the eight-member team...

The Yamuna may be in spate near Delhi, states like Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu may be soaked wet and the Mithi river -- the lifeline of Mumbai -- could be flowing at the brim, but for people in the East and Northeast India the thirst for rain prolongs. They wait for the rain gods to smile upon them. Overall, this is one of the best monsoon India has...

There’s suddenly a flurry of activity in Karotia, a nondescript village in West Bengal’s Burdwan district. Lately, a lot of politicians and state government officials have been visiting the village, and they say work on a nearly forgotten 14km irrigation canal is going to start soon. It’s been nearly 36 years since the state government first proposed to dig the canal, recalls Azizur Haque, the local panchayat chief. It was to...

The implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 has created controversy in West Bengal. The gram sabha, the basic unit in the process of forest rights recognition, has been replaced by the gram sansad, denoting the village level constituency under the panchayati raj system. This has been followed by contiguous arrangements as well as initiatives which are inconsistent with the Act....

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, now on a tour of the State's drought-hit areas, has said that the prime task before the government was to save whatever crop had been sown in the 11 districts where cultivation had been badly affected by the errant monsoon. Protecting livelihoods was also very important, he said. “Our first task now is to save whatever crop has already been cultivated by the farmers in...