-Outlook Karimnagar (AP): A debt-ridden weaver allegedly committed suicide in Karimnagar district, police said today. Goli Yadagiri (55), a weaver from Mandepalli urban colony in Sircilla town, 40 kms from here, had borrowed money from private lenders for the marriage of his daughter. However, after failing to clear the debt, he took the extreme step and hanged himself from the ceiling fan in his house last night, police said. A case has been registered...

-One World South Asia Reducing incomes, stagnating yields, increasing costs of cultivation, fragmenting of land-holdings and reducing of institutions credit facilities plot the graph of farmers' suicides in India. A national consultation and public hearing on framers' suicides being organised by Action Aid in the capital brought together experts and policy critics to evaluate the progress of government initiatives to respond to the ongoing agrarian crisis. Suicides are only one extreme symptom of...

-First Post A lot has been written in recent weeks about crony capitalism, but an important issue for the media to introspect over is this: can this happen without significant amounts of crony journalism? When media companies begin to think they can run coal plants, surely this compromises them (Lokmat Group, DB Corp). When political parties think they ought to own media houses or be aligned to one (YSR Congress’ Sakshi, the...

-Down to Earth As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri A fatal paradox strikes Bundelkhand in the face—an overflowing wheat stock yet an overwhelming number of farmer suicides. Farmers here dread the government wheat procurement centre and the post-mortem house. In Orai, a small town in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the two are...

-IANS West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Friday conceded that there were 'debt-ridden peasants who contemplated committing suicides'. 'There are many farmers who take loans from Money Lenders at high interest and when they are unable to repay the money, they contemplate suicide. Do not give up life like that, life is most valuable,' said Banerjee, after giving Kisan Credit Cards to farmers here in the South 24-Parganas district, about 150 km...