-The Hindu Patna: “I will die hungry, but won’t do this work anymore,” avowed Lad Kunwar from Madhya Pradesh. When this intrepid Balmiki woman from the Bundelkhand region gave up working as a manual scavenger, she discovered dignity. “The work is horrible. It is so disgusting when it rains and the waste that you are carrying on your head sullies your body. All we got in return was stale roti. When I...
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Akhilesh waives Rs 1,650 crore farm loans on dad Mulayam's birthday
-The Times of India LUCKNOW: A cash-strapped Uttar Pradesh government wrote off loans worth Rs 1,650 crore to farmers on Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's 74th birthday on Thursday, fulfilling an election promise that is bound to further deplete the state's already dwindling coffers. Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said 7.2 lakh farmers, who've taken loans of up to Rs 50,000 from rural cooperative banks, will benefit from the waiver. "Farmers who've...
More »Akhilesh Yadav government waives loans of lakhs of farmers -Ashish Mukherjee
-NDTV Lucknow: Lakhs of farmers in Uttar Pradesh who took loans worth Rs. 50,000 or more and have returned 10 per cent of the amount got a big surprise today, with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav waiving their loans. The state government said the decision will benefit approximately 7.20 lakh farmers. But the scheme but comes with a rider. It will apply to only those farmers who took the loan by mortgaging property. Such...
More »Death on mounds of a bumper crop-Richard Mahapatra
-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...
More »14,000 farmers ended life in 2011-Nitin Sethi
-The Times of India As many as 14,004 farmers committed suicide in 2011 countrywide, the latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau has noted. The number is lower than the previous year's figure of 15,933 but the dip might be much less considering that Chhattisgarh, which recorded 1,412 farmer suicides in 2010, claimed that there were no farmer suicides at all in the state in 2011. As always, Maharashtra fared...
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