In a shocking revelation about Bihar’s crumbling law and order situation, 116 villagers in Darbhanga are found to have purchased guns with the money they were given to build houses under the Indira Awas Yojna (IAY). The poor villagers felt they needed guns more than homes to confront continuous attacks by dacoits. In two other incidents reflecting rising public anger against frequent robberies in Bihar, three robbers were lynched in...

Soumendu Barat, postgraduate in history and Bengali Nasima Begum, graduate in economics with diploma in a computer course Sanjay Dutta, postgraduate in Bengali Oct.13: In Calcutta this morning, Soumendu, Nasima and Sanjay were preparing for the biggest gamble of their lives where the chance of success is .004. The jackpot? A Group D government job that will enable them to work as “peon, orderly peon, night guard or Darwan”. Joblessness, the curse generations have lived...

A series of social audits in NREGS works in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district led to unearthing of humungous irregularities and filing of FIRs against several government and panchayat officials and release of delayed payments worth crores of rupees to the ordinary NREGS workers (See details/ links below). The irregularities included the use of sub-stanDard material, non-issuance of job cards or post office passbooks and fudging of account books. The audits were organized...

The death of a human rights activist is rarely a lead story of newspapers, especially in Andhra Pradesh. However, that has what happened when K Balagopal died in Hyderabad on Thursday night. All the three leading Telugu newspapers in the state, Eenadu, Saakshi and Andhra Jyothi, carried the news prominently in the front page either as lead or second lead. The New Indian Express also carried it as a lead...

Growing numbers of elected representatives fund their poll campaigns with corporate backing. And growing numbers of people with a big business background have ventured directly into the electoral arena.  Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid’s call for restraint, however mild, on the CEO feeding frenzy at the compensation trough, seems the least objectionable statement made by a Minister in months. (Contrast this, for example, with the Agriculture Minister’s warning that people...