Calcuttans tried many a trick to fight the discomfiture induced by rolling power cuts today but a doctor in a pitch-dark labour room had little else other than a pack of cotton to help a lady who had become a mother minutes ago. The young mother lay in the labour room bleeding for 30 minutes this morning as the doctor could not stitch the cut in the feeble light of candles...

Important draft legislation was recently unveiled in Rajasthan that would impose serious punishment for ‘witch-hunting’. Getting legislators to sign off on the bill, however, will prove difficult. Over the years, the women’s movement in Rajasthan has had some success in making violence against women into an important political issue. Activists have forced political parties and governments to demonstrate that they are addressing this constituency, which the media has dubbed ‘Mahila Sangathan’....

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government’s proposed land acquisition law, a politically sensitive and critical piece of legislation that could potentially remove a big roadblock to industrial investment, aims to address rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R), providing safeguards for both land owners and livelihood losers, while clearly defining the “public purpose” for which land can be acquired by the government. “This draft Bill seeks to balance the need for facilitating land acquisition...

-Express News Service   The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a chargesheet on Thursday in the Patiala House courts against seven persons, including four MCD officials, in a case relating to corruption in the installation of street lights before the Commonwealth Games. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) had floated a tender for street lighting in the city in 2008, in which, according to the CBI, the seven persons named and a...

-PTI   Just over a month after they called off a 13-day-long stir that resulted in a loss of about Rs 630 crore, workers at Maruti Suzuki India's Manesar plant went on strike again this afternoon. The workers resorted to a strike when five of them were suspended for "allegedly assaulting a supervisor" yesterday. When contacted, a company spokesperson said: "One of the supervisors was assaulted by workers yesterday and when disciplinary action...