-PTI India's total population stands at 1.21 billion, which is 17.7 per cent more than the last decade, and population growth of females was higher than that of males. According to the final census released by Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde today, India's total population as on March 1, 2011 is 1,210,726,932 or 1.21 billion - an increase of 181.96 million persons in absolute number of population during 2001-11. There was an increase...

-The Hindu Business Line   Arsenic and fluoride contaminated water has condemned millions to live wasted lives in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Business Line visited several villages in the affected regions for this special report by A. Srinivas. Sixty-nine-year-old Renubala Ari of Deganga village in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district is counting her last days. But it is not her death that worries her. Blind in both eyes and with painful...

-The Hindu Business Line The IMD should be conferred autonomous status so that it functions along professional lines, without worrying about political correctness. Given how awry its forecasts in the last couple of years had gone, one can be forgiven for being cynical about the India Meteorological Department's (IMD) prognosis of a ‘normal' South-West monsoon this time. The country's official weather agency has predicted nationwide rainfall during the four-month monsoon season...

-The Hindu Moscow: Ahead of a key government-level interaction with Russia here on Monday, India has sought to assure Russia that it is not deliberately delaying the startup of the Kudankulam plant with the motive of thrashing out liability issues in that project and others proposed elsewhere in the country. To show its sincerity, India is dispatching a key Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) official M. I. Joy from...

-The Hindu The Saradha group's spectacular failure has inflicted severe pain not only on its gullible depositors and agents but in a real sense on India's financial regulators and the State government as well. There is a law and order problem in West Bengal. Very soon, public attention will shift to regulation or the lack of it. The crisis, it appears, will not be confined to one state. In the worst...