While Punjab remains, in popular perception, the land of plenty, a group of economists at Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) has revealed that the picture isn't rosy at all — in fact it's grim. Rural indebtedness has touched Rs 35,000 crore and, worse, 3,000 debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide in the last eight years. Economists are also relating the suicides with high illiteracy among the poor farmers and say Punjab needs...

Activists realise it takes a fight to translate democracy from thin paper to thick action In the winter of 1997, advocate Ashok Agarwal filed a petition in the Supreme Court opposing the nearly 400 per cent hike in school fees. This was the year the Fifth Pay Commission recommendations were implemented and the salaries of teachers shot up. Parents trying to cope with the overall price rise were suddenly hit by...

During the last 10 days two land acquisition notifications have been set aside. The Punjab and Haryana High Court (HC) has quashed a Haryana government’s 2002 notification for inappropriately releasing land to private developers. Similarly, the Allahabad High Court has repealed a UP government’s notification under which land was acquired for a private project in 2005. Both notifications have been cancelled on account of procedural lapses. However, these rulings highlight...

The fraction of Scheduled Caste children enrolled in schools is dropping even though Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes are improving their presence in admission rosters, the government’s latest statistics show. The number of enrolled Scheduled Caste children for every hundred students has dropped for a second consecutive year, the statistics released today by the National University for Educational Planning and Administration revealed. The statistics were collected by the district information system...

The Supreme Court today directed all state governments to set up juvenile boards, child welfare committees and juvenile police units within six weeks. A bench, headed by Justice Dalveer Bhandari, passed the order while hearing a public interest litigation that sought the court’s intervention to deal with child trafficking, which is rampant in the areas bordering Nepal and Bangladesh. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the petitioner, said that juvenile welfare committees...