-The Telegraph The brother of Prabhat Nayek, an East Midnapore native killed in Wednesday’s blasts in mumbai, today alleged he had to pay Rs 9,000 to police to get the body out of the J.J. Hospital morgue. “I had to pay the police Rs 9,000 to get my elder brother’s body out of the hospital morgue,” Gurupada said at his home in Brajalalpur village, Patashpur, this evening. He said the police again...
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Rethink the communal violence bill by Ashutosh Varshney
The communal violence bill prepared by the National Advisory Council (NAC) seeks fundamentally to change how the government deals with violence against minorities. The bill focuses on religious and linguistic minorities as well the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but religious minorities are at its heart. The bill has some undeniable strengths, but it suffers from two analytically fatal flaws. First, it places excessive faith in the state machinery. Though...
More »Sex tests hit rural India by Rukmini Srinivasan & Himanshi Dhawan
Fears on the rampant use of pre-natal sex determination technology in rural areas have been confirmed with census data indicating that child sex ratio (CSR) fell far more sharply in villages than in urban areas in the last decade. According to provision data on population, though the urban CSR is far worse than that in rural areas, the fall in CSR in rural areas is around four times than that in...
More »A day at the vineyards by P Sainath
Some of that legendary ‘Banarasi pan' could have begun its journey from Gujjari Mohanty's vineyard in Govindpur, Orissa. “I've sold our leaves in Benares [Varanasi] myself,” says her son Sanatan. As have many of their neighbours. “Our leaves are high-quality and greatly valued.” The betel leaf, though, is not just about pan. It is also valued for medicinal qualities as a digestive, for the antiseptic nature of its oil, and...
More »Monsanto official Beaten by farmers in India over Failed GMO Bt Cotton Seeds
-Salem-News.com (NAGPUR)-We have reported in the past an alarming suicide rate among farmers in India that is connected to the failure of American GMO (genetically modified organism) cotton seeds. Monsanto, the U.S. company responsible for Agent Orange, a cancer-causing chemical sprayed on the jungles of Vietnam, is now in the GMO food and seed business. Monsanto stands accused of having an international monopoly of the notorious bio-engineered Bt cotton seeds. Advocates for the...
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