-PTI   Four cotton growers in Vidarbha committed Suicide in the last three days as the local administration has stopped distribution of relief aid to crisis-ridden farmers because of the code of conduct in place for coming local bodies elections. This was an observation made by a local organization fighting for farmers' cause on Sunday. "All the officials are busy because of the ensuing local body election and the State Election Commission has...

School girls in bright red uniforms troop down the slope in groups of threes and fours in Koppa, the fertile sugarcane town in southern Karnataka’s agricultural district of Mandya. A teenage boy on a motorcycle does the dim-and-dip with his headlights, the equivalent of a wink, as he passes the girls on his way up the slope in what seems to be a strut on a motorcycle. “Television and mobile phones...

While Governor M K Narayanan has also put the weight of his office behind the growing concern over farmer Suicides in West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government seems determined to play these down. In Burdwan, the state’s rice bowl, where 18 of the 27 deaths have been reported in the past four months, the district administration has been approaching families of victims for written statements saying the Suicides had nothing to...

Centre favours CBI inquiry into alleged misappropriation of funds With the Congress-led Union government favouring a CBI enquiry, in its affidavit before the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court, into embezzlement in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme funds, trouble is apparently brewing for the BSP government under Chief Minister Mayawati, who is already bearing the brunt of the NHRM scam in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. The Centre filed the affidavit...

-The Economic Times The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was started in 2005 by the first UPA government. It has had some positive results: after 15 years of stagnation , over 1,00,000 new healthcare professionals have been inducted and more and more village women are admitted to institutions to deliver babies.  But in India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, the NRHM is at the centre of a massive corruption racket. Three senior medical...