Jawaharlal Nehru University, set up as a centre for academic excellence for the whole country, mainly caters to students from UP and Bihar. This has come out in the draft performance audit report of Comptroller & Auditor General that also found JNU having diverted Rs 6.29 crore, allocated under Infrastructure Development Fund for OBC reservation, to pay electricity/water charges. The government auditor said JNU had failed to maintain an "all-India character...

Health targets fail as they are set without strategies. The 12th Five-Year Plan should be used to look at the changes needed in the public health system. Health is currently a privilege in India. Not a right. Maternal and child health remains neglected even after countless plans, programmes and political proclamations. Every year, nearly 60,000 women die in pregnancy and childbirth, while approximately 1.7 million children less than five years of...

West Bengal: Mamata Banerjee moves closer to keeping her promise to return to ‘unwilling' farmers the land given to Tata Motors. WITH the passage of the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill, 2011, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee got one step closer to keeping the promise made to the people of Singur that she would reclaim the land allocated to Tata Motors and return it to “unwilling” farmers (that...

-PTI   The West Bengal government today submitted before the Calcutta high court that it was not against the Tatas but in favour of farmers and employment generation. Contesting the Tata Motors Ltd prayer that the Singur Rehabilitation and Development Act 2011 be declared unconstitutional, senior counsel for the government Saktinath Mukherjee submitted before Justice Saumitra Pal that the government was answerable to the people as 1000 acres of fertile land was...

The episodes of violence in land acquisition by the government, as witnessed recently in Bhatta-Parsaul in Uttar Pradesh and in other states earlier, occur because patterns of violence are inbuilt into the process. Despite a bill pending in Parliament since 2007, there has been little effort by political parties to evolve a consensus on acquisition of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. The law as at present and also the provisions...