-The Times of India The molecular biologist who was arrested and put behind bars for 10 days for his role in the Nonadanga protests said on Wednesday he was committed to the slum-dwellers' cause. Partho Sarothi Ray insisted at a press conference within hours of walking out of jail that he had been framed, and described the situation in Bengal as a "dark state of democracy". "I was not on the spot...

-The Times of India A woman tehsildar had a narrow escape from being mowed down by an earth extractor machine in Madhya Pradesh's Dewas district on Tuesday when she tried to stop illegal mining. The incident comes barely a month after an IPS Officer Narendra Kumar was crushed to death by the mining mafia in Morena. Acting on a tip-off on largescale illegal mining in the district, the tehsildar, Meena Pal, rushed...

The fear that “anyone can be arrested any day” brought some 2,000 teachers from campuses across Calcutta out on the road on Wednesday to protest the arrest of Ambikesh Mahapatra, the Jadavpur University professor who had been put behind bars for forwarding an Internet joke lampooning chief minister Mamata Banerjee. They walked from the central library of Jadavpur University to Triangular Park on Rashbehari Avenue. The rally, organised by the...

The ICDS' plight is symptomatic of the problems plaguing the Union government's flagship schemes for the poor all over the country.   INDIA may be the only country in the world where we describe the ensuring of the basic socio-economic rights of the people in terms of “flagship schemes” that are seen as the benevolent contribution of governments. One problem with this approach is that the delivery of basic services is...

-The Telegraph BDO Sisir Kumar Singh and Co. could never have imagined this treasure hunt to go bad. But it did. They were assaulted yesterday on their way back from Kamarchak village where they had traced about 100 antique silver coins that were recovered from a school construction site in neighbouring Bodaiya village, about 40km from the Dumka district headquarters. In the end they managed to salvage 23 coins, the rest were looted, allegedly...