Showing its concern for farmers, the Mayawati government on Wednesday decided to implement the amended national agriculture insurance scheme (NAIS) and the all weather-based crop insurance scheme from the current sowing season. Both these schemes involve an expenditure of Rs 900 lakh. A decision to this effect was taken at a cabinet meeting presided over by chief minister Mayawati here on Wednesday. The NAIS, according to an official release, will be implemented...

The Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP alliance has won more than four-fifths of the Bihar assembly seats, but there is one unusual aspect to this Landslide. The alliance got a little less than two-fifths of the votes cast. Why should this be unusual? Check out the accompanying chart and you will find that other wins of similar magnitude in terms of seats have invariably been the result of substantially larger vote shares. The comparisons...

Often called Chanakya for his political astuteness, Engineer-politician Nitish Kumar blended his secularist ideology with pragmatic politics and combined the development plank with innovative social engineeering equations in Bihar to bask in glory yet again. Doing an encore after today's Landslide victory, the 59-year-old chief minister with his trademark kurta pyjama and grey stubble has become RJD strongman Lalu Prasad's nemesis single handedly contributing to the electoral meltdown of RJD-led Secular...

The CAG indicts Uttarakhand for pursuing hydel power projects indiscriminately without concern for the environment. IN a severe indictment of the Uttarakhand government, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India said it was pushing the State towards a major environmental catastrophe by following a highly ambitious hydropower policy. In a report titled “Performance Audit of Hydropower Development Through Private Sector Participation”, which was released recently, the CAG substantiates the allegations...

Activists and many residents blame a hydel project for the growing frequency of Landslides in some Uttarakhand villages. THE nearly 3,500 residents of Bhatwadi village along the Uttarkashi-Gangotri highway in Uttarakhand saw their world come crashing down around them on the night of August 12/13. A massive Landslide that hit the village formed cracks up to five metres wide on the highway and these crept up the hills to over 100...