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...
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Distress and death by Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay
West Bengal: An agrarian crisis looms over the State as farmers commit suicide in spite of a bumper crop. THE topic of suicide figured repeatedly in Safar Molla's conversations with his neighbours a few days before his death. The 18-year-old marginal farmer from Kaltikuri village in Bardhaman district's Bhatar block talked about it quite casually, in fact even jocularly. Everybody in the village knew he was up to his neck in...
More »Guardians of faith by Purnima S Tripathi
In Chhattisgarh, Hindutva manifests itself in the form of attacks on Christians; in Uttarakhand it does so in the form of promoting Sanskrit. IN Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, States ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindutva agenda may not be strident, but the Sangh Parivar orientation is unmistakable in various government policies and programmes. While in Uttarakhand the party places much emphasis on gau mata (bovine goddess) and the teaching of...
More »Teesta Setalvad of Citizens for Justice and Peace interviewed by Anupama Katakam
Interview with Teesta Setalvad of Citizens for Justice and Peace. TEESTA SETALVAD, through her organisation Citizens for Justice and Peace, has been at the forefront of the fight for justice for the victims of the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat. She has also worked extensively on many other issues affecting minority communities in the State. In this interview to Frontline, she speaks about Chief Minister Narendra Modi's new tactics and the marginalisation...
More »Farmers' kin upset over West Bengal's refusal to acknowledge suicides by Ananya Dutta
“Believe me, I am not making any of this up,” insists Asim Saha brother of Amiya Saha, who killed himself after consuming a bottle of pesticide a month ago after failing to find buyers for the paddy he had harvested, when he speaks of the events that occurred on the fateful night and the paddy that remains unsold at their home in Rajpur village in the West Bengal's Bardhaman district. The...
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