-The Hindu Many debt-ridden farmers in Bardhaman district have committed suicide. Bardhaman (West Bengal): “What is the use of voting? Elections will come and go but our lives will continue to be miserable,” said Parbati Let of Jamalpur in Bardhaman district of West Bengal. About a year ago, her husband, Atul Let (43), a potato farmer, committed suicide by consuming pesticide as he was unable to repay a loan of Rs. 50,000...
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For bargadars, land is now labour lost -Smita Gupta
-The Hindu A systematic attempt is being made in several West Bengal districts to evict sharecroppers from land, despite the legal protection West Medinipur: At Jamirarah village, Srikanta Hansda points to two double-storey houses in the shadow of which his home — a rough mud dwelling with an asbestos clerestory roof — squats: “Those are the homes of the Ghosh family. They own Annapurna Bhandar, a well-known grocery store in Medinipur city...
More »Track these job destruction numbers -Barkha Deva
-The Hindu Surveys conducted by activists estimate that there are over 1.2 million manual scavengers in India As numbers become data and move from being just a random rearrangement of 0-9, they speak volumes about peoples, nations, and their objectives. They form the basis of government policies, and have the intrinsic potential to change lives, correct historical wrongs and national trajectories. The last election results, we were told, were a message from ‘Aspirational...
More »Govt to focus on execution, go slow on new scheme launches -Nivedita Mookerji
-The Indian Express Instead of announcing new schemes, focus to be on those already announced and key sectors As the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government pads up to enter its third year in office, its focus would be on key areas such as banking, defence, retail, manufacturing, infrastructure and job creation. If the first two years were about announcing signature schemes and campaigns, and setting the agenda for the...
More »The woman who electrified a village and took on a mafia -Salman Ravi
-BBC Kalawati Devi Rawat is known as the woman who brought electricity to her remote village in the hills of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, writes BBC Hindi's Salman Ravi. It was the early 1980s and she had just been married and moved to Bacher village to live with her husband. The village had no electricity and she found life tough once it got dark in the hills. One day, she led a...
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