-The Hindustan Times   The horror of infant deaths returned to haunt the Malda Medical College and Hospital on Friday when six babies died within a span of 10 hours. The condition of several other babies is stated to be critical. The Malda hospital made headlines at least twice this year —first, when nine babies died within 36 hours in November and the second time when 15 babies died within 72 hours...

Among the demands of the CPM, one of the fiercest critics of the government’s version of the Lokpal Bill, a key one is the inclusion of all government employees under the purview of the Lokpal. Yet, in states that the party rules or has ruled, the Lokayukta Acts passed by CPM governments don’t give the institute such a reach. In Tripura, the government passed a Lokayukta Act a year ago, leaving out...

Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, in an article on left-wing extremism (“From Tirupati to Pashupati?” The Hindu , October 14, 2011), observed candidly: “It is not the naxals who have created the ground conditions ripe for their ideology — it is the singular failure of successive governments both in the States and the Centre.” There lay the main cause of the festering sore of naxalism, often characterised as left-wing...

-The Business Standard   A data battle is exciting news for us, almost like what breaking news is to many others. We’ve been closely tracking the ‘Curious Case Of West Bengal’s Missing Numbers’ for a few months now. The case is getting more interesting, almost mysterious, as the results of a Right To Information (RTI) petition filed by ISPR Research Fellow Sourjya Bhowmick with the Ministry of Finance show. A few weeks ago,...

-Associated Press   Bootleg liquor containing toxic methanol killed 143 people and sickened dozens more who drank the cheap, illicit brew bought at small shops in West Bengal, officials said Thursday. Police arrested 10 suspected bootleggers. Emergency medical teams rushed to the village outside Kolkata, and thousands of relatives, many of them wailing in grief, gathered outside the packed hospital. Inside, dead bodies lay on the floor covered in quilts, while the ill...