Trinamool Congress government’s policies in West Bengal are leading to suicides of small farmers, a reign of terror in the Jangalmahal area and a curbing of academic and trade union rights. Its student activists beat up students and teachers who do not profess loyalty to the party. Will the CPI(M) which led the previous Left Front government for 34 years and paid the price for its insolence and corruption...

No one will deny that the least a democratic government can do for its people in a civilised society is to ensure access to food at affordable prices. Ensuring food security is, therefore, a fundamental responsibility of the state. Public distribution system (PDS) is the instrument through which food grains are made available to targeted beneficiaries. Government's resolve to provide for food security is laudable.  At the same time, it does...

The District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Vellore has adopted a cluster approach in undertaking various works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in order to enable more villagers to get employment, according to N. Srinivasan, Project Officer of the DRDA. Talking to newspersons at the Alangulam irrigation tank in Melappulam village panchayat in Arcot panchayat union where the work of deepening of the tank under MGNREGS was...

Faulty procurement, rising farm inputs force West Bengal farmers to commit suicide LONG known as farmer friendly, West Bengal is now making headlines for farmers’ suicides. Reportedly 31 farmers, including landless farm labourers and small traders of agriculture produce, in the state took their lives between October last year and January. Twenty-one of the 31 deaths are from the state’s rice bowl Burdwan district. And this is probably a reason the spate...

Farmers unable to bear the costs of agricultural inputs: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Charging the Trinamool Congress-led government with failing to admit the prevalence of farmers' suicides in the State, Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said here on Sunday that such suicides were “not seen or heard of” when the Left Front was in power for 34 years.  “The government is not ready to accept that the farmers...