-AP The microfinance industry pursued a path of rapid business growth in recent years; two investigations now link it to debtor suicides   First they were stripped of their utensils, furniture, mobile phones, television sets, ration cards and heirloom gold jewellery. Then, some of them drank pesticide. One woman threw herself into a pond. Another jumped into a well with her children. Sometimes, the debt collectors watched nearby. More than 200 poor, debt-ridden residents of...

-The Telegraph The World Health Organisation has deleted India from its list of polio endemic countries, acknowledging the absence of any new instance of illness caused by the wild polio virus for more than a year since a child was diagnosed with the disease in Howrah in January 2011. “This is the first time in history we’re able to put up a map like this one,” Bruce Aylward, an assistant director-general for...

-The Times of India   Denying charges that their campaign against the Russian-aided Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project was being funded by United States-based groups, the People's Movement against Nuclear Energy convener S P Udayakumar on Saturday threatened legal action against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union minister of state in the PMO V Narayanasamy.  The Union minister told TOI on Friday that the licences of three NGOs backing the anti-nuclear protests have been...

No one will deny that the least a democratic government can do for its people in a civilised society is to ensure access to food at affordable prices. Ensuring food security is, therefore, a fundamental responsibility of the state. Public distribution system (PDS) is the instrument through which food grains are made available to targeted beneficiaries. Government's resolve to provide for food security is laudable.  At the same time, it does...

-The Telegraph Dispur today said the state’s economy was “performing well” when the country’s overall growth rate was projected to be affected by the economic meltdown in Europe. The principal secretary of the state finance department, Himangshu Sekhar Das, said Assam had not borrowed any money from the market in the current fiscal (2011-12) and its tax collection had recorded an increase of 33 per cent, most of which had come from...