North-East should go for investment in public-private-partnership basis for more development work, member of planning commission B K Chaturvedi said here today. "Since public invest has been sufficient, the states should opt for public-private-partnership in a big way in different areas of both physical and social developments," he said while speaking at Moatsu-cum-Roadshow programme here. Chaturvedi, who looks after North-East in Planning Commission, feels the region lags in many areas and NE...

Armed Maoists and People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities leaders have warned nearly 200 villages in and around Lalgarh not to provide information to census officials. After collection of data for Census 2011 began in Bengal on April 1, Maoists, with guns slung across their shoulders, and People’s Committee leaders swooped on villages in Lalgarh, Salboni, Belpahari and Jhargram and asked people not to “co-operate” with the census teams. “We have asked...

Thirty-eight years after he set out on his mission to provide basic services and solutions to the problems of rural India, Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy from Rajasthan stands in the company of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar, noted economist Amartya Sen and author Chetan Bhagat as the Time magazine names him in the 2010 list of 100 people who most affect our world. It’s the work done by...

Two years of drought has started to take its toll on the people of Vidarbha, with a failed crop leaving them with no income to tide over the crisis. He's a butcher out of business. “I want to shift to a town like Panderkauda,” says Sarfaraz Qureshi in Yavatmal district. “I'm unable to sell any meat in the villages I work in.” Qureshi is a small operator who carries as...

A group of villagers sit on a shaded platform on a hot afternoon in Mirche village. The topic of discussion today is the Mongra barrage - a dam-like structure constructed on the nearby Shivnath river. The conversation is animated. The villagers discuss the displacement the barrage has caused and the lack of compensation from the authorities. "It's been four years since the dam was built. Where is our compensation," asks...