-The New Indian Express MAURANIPUR: The ear-piercing sound of a train zooming past in front of her hut does little to disturb Shanti. As her three children -- Manish, Aneesh and daughter Laali – try to playfully reignite a fire by blowing air into what appears to be a dying fire -- Shanti encourages them to light the fire once again. But finally, it dies. For the 25-year-old, the trains which keep...
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Farmer suicides on higher side in Punjab, report held back till poll results -Sukhdeep Kaur
-Hindustan Times A potentially “politically-damaging” report on farmer suicides in Punjab will now be released only after the election results on March 11. The state government had commissioned three state universities — Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana; Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar and Punjabi University, Patiala — to study cases of farmer suicides between April 2010 and March 2013. The three had earlier examined cases from 2000 to 2010 for compensation and...
More »From Plate to Plough: It's not about loan waivers -Ashok Gulati & Ranjana Roy
-The Indian Express Indian farmers are facing multiple crises. Punjab’s case highlights their problems. THE ANSWER TO who will form the next government in Punjab is currently sealed in the ballot boxes. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Election Commission has written to the home minister, reinforcing its demand to make electoral bribery a cognisable offence. But what about the assurances made in election manifestos which promise voters the moon before the...
More »Clean Ganga project hurts livelihoods, divides communities -Deeptiman Tiwary
-The Indian Express Suspension of work during festivals to ensure a cleaner Ganga and cow vigilantism, which has led to closure of several abattoirs and brought raw hide supply to half, have made things worse. Kanpur: The Namami Ganga Project has hurt leather workshop owner Aqueel Ahmed, 27. His earnings have dwindled with the crackdown on factories polluting the river in Kanpur’s Jajmau area. A kilometre away, priest Ramesh Prasad Tiwari,...
More »Freedom with defects -Ramachandra Guha
-The Telegraph After the third general elections held in 1962, the scholar-statesman, C. Rajagopalachari, wrote a fascinating, if now forgotten, essay on the imperfections of our young democracy. "The Indian electorate", remarked Rajaji, "suffers from well-known defects from which Western democracies are relatively free. The Indian voters are in great measure poor and vulnerable to bribery: even a day's expense for food serves to buy a large number of the poor...
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