Ten persons, including two Deputy Directors, have been arrested in connection with two scams in the Public Distribution Scheme in Kishtwar and Rajouri districts of JAMmu and Kashmir, sources said on Tuesday. The Crime Branch of Police conducted raids at the premises of the Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution (CAPD) department in Srinagar, Anantnag and JAMmu on Monday and arrested the four accused officials in connection with misappropriation of food grains...

Incessant rain and high tide with 8-metre-tall waves have flooded over 100 coastal villages in East Midnapore as well as Digha, affecting nearly 10,000 people and leaving thousands homeless. Over 500 mud huts have collapsed since last night, rendering over 2,000 people homeless. The villagers have been shifted to relief camps set up by panchayats in Shankarpur, Deshpran, Tajpur, Khejuri and Kendamari in Nandigram. The Hooghly flows into the Bay of...

Delhi NGOs initiate a process to survey the city's homeless people and reach welfare schemes to them. IN the narrow lanes of Khari Baoli, Asia's largest wholesale spice and grocery market in the crowded Old Delhi area near the Red Fort, labourers grapple with heavy sacks of grain, pulses, and so on as they load them on to wooden trolleys or unload them from trucks. There is no room for...

The JAMmu and Kashmir government is going to enhance allocation of funds under NREGA up to 500 crore against the availability of Rs 208 crore for the current fiscal year. This was stated by the minister for Rural Development, Ali Mohammad Sagar in Assembly while replying to supplementaries to a question of Subash Chander Gupta in Legislative Council today. He said the scheme primarily envisages providing employment but also works to create...

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, since 2003, one Indian farmer has committed suicide every 30 minutes. In 2008, 16,196 farmers took their own lives, bringing the total number of farmer suicides in India between 1997 and 2008 to 199,132. (Significantly, P. Sainath is of the opinion that like all government data, these figures too are unreliable. For when women farmhands kill themselves, their deaths are not enlisted as...