The failure of timely intervention by the state government as regards the woes of cotton growers of Vidarbha seems to have only added to the agrarian crisis. The suicide by six more cotton growers of the region in the last 72 hours paints a grim picture of the correlation between the government’s inaction and distressed farmers driven to take the extreme step.   Reports reaching here on Thursday said that among the...

Seek adequate compensation from Carbide, Dow Chemical On the 27th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy on Saturday, victims and survivors, still waiting for relief, will register their protest by launching an indefinite rail roko andolan (stop trains). “On December 3, please don't travel by train. Change your reservations now. We are sorry to cause you inconvenience but stopping the trains is the only effective way we can think of to get...

-The Indian Express   The breakthrough that the joint anti-Naxal operations achieved in West Bengal last week, in the Kishenji encounter, was preceded by a visible regress in the battle against the Maoists in the state. This step back was the result of a hesitation on the part of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to pursue the police and paramilitary operations which had begun to yield gains in the last days...

With climate change already claiming human victims, the world must get an agreement out of the UN conference in South Africa The United Nations' annual climate summit descended on Durban, South Africa, this week, but not in time to prevent the tragic death of Qodeni Ximba. The 17 year-old was one of 10 people killed in Durban Sunday, the night before the UN conference opened. Torrential rains pummelled the seaside city...

The first judgment in a 2002 riots case and the SIT report on the Ishrat Jahan killing go against the Gujarat government. THE verdict in a crucial and long-running case involving a massacre and the investigation report in another case, of alleged encounter killings, both delivered in November, give hope to victims of the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat that they will get justice, even if delayed. In the first case, the special...