-The Telegraph   Bengal is the only state in India where maternal mortality rate has increased over a recent three-year period, although it is close to achieving key millennium development goal targets, indicating human and social development, for 2015. The findings of the latest nation-wide sample registration survey (SRS) shows that India’s maternal mortality rate (MMR), the number of women between 15 and 49 years dying from childbirth associated causes per 100,000...

-PTI The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the Haryana Government to pay a compensation of Rs.6 lakh to the mother of a young man who was killed on the diktat of akhap panchayat (illegal village court) for marrying a girl belonging to the same ‘gotra' (lineage). Manoj, 23, of Kaithal and his newly-wed wife Babli, 19, were killed in Kaithal district in 2007 allegedly on the diktat of Khap or...

Andhra farmers shun growing paddy this kharif in absence of buyers, storage space Achanta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, hit the headlines in 1967 with a record rice yield in the kharif or monsoon crop season. It was the time of the Green Revolution. N Subba Rao, a farmer from the village, harvested three tonnes of paddy from just one kilogramme of seeds. Other farmers followed suit and the village...

It is essential for India to raise the level of public expenditure in education to ensure quality. THE failure of the Indian state more than six decades after Independence to provide universal access to quality schooling and to ensure equal access to higher education among all socio-economic groups and across gender and region must surely rank among the more dismal and significant failures of the development project in the country....

Farmers from across the state have decided to join hands against the land acquisition. Farmers` action committee has planned a joint meeting on June 30, which is likely to be attended by those from Gorakhpur of Fatehabad district, Agroha of Hisar and Panjokhra of Ambala district. Farmers of Agroha are on a hunger strike for the past 25 days and those of Gorakhpur are protesting for the past 315 days. Farmer...