-The Telegraph   The urban development ministry is miffed at the budget allocation for the urban renewal mission and has told the House standing committee it would not “sit quietly” but fight for more funds from the finance ministry. The aggressive posture comes despite the poor progress of the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, with only 127 of the 555 projects under its first phase completed by the deadline of March 31, 2012. A...

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday threatened to bring her anger to the streets of New Delhi and launch an agitation in the capital if the Centre didn't give in to her demand for a moratorium on debt repayment. In a rare and exclusive interview to TOI at the Writers' Buildings in Kolkata, the Trinamool Congress chief didn't once utter the words "threat" or "pullout", but her message was...

BHOPAL: The sterilization fiasco in Madhya Pradesh refuses to die down. Lamenting the decision of making his wife undergo sterilization two months ago, a 35-year-old man, father of six daughters committed suicide in Betul district on Wednesday. His wife, who went under the scalpel in February, alleged that her husband was promised a plot of land and cash by the panchayat secretary and sarpanch of the village in exchange for the...

Here’s a “growth story” that Standard and Poor’s missed: a piece of official statistics shows good old India has grown — literally. Over 5,000sqkm of wasteland has been converted into “net” usable terrain between 2005 and 2008, according to the Wasteland Atlas of India that was released today. Even Bengal, pilloried for profligacy and other wasteful pastimes, has done its modest bit to transform wasteland. But the big battles against barren land...

A Comptroller and Auditor-General of India report has expressed dismay over the rising share of funds disbursed by various ministries to local bodies and NGOs in 2010-11. The CAG report on the accounts of the Union government was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. "An analysis of plan expenditure revealed that 77% of the total plan expenditure was in the form of grants-in-aid payment,'' the report stated. "In five of the ten...