The government has decided to throw its might behind private purchases of farm land overseas to ensure food security for India.  The agriculture ministry has sought views from other ministries on an institutional mechanism to extend sovereign support to India Inc's acquisition of farm land abroad that could include guaranteed buyback of harvest from the cultivation overseas.  Agriculture secretary PK Basu said that the proposal is in a nascent stage. "We had...

A first-year MBBS student at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who hailed from a village in Rajasthan and was the second topper in the Scheduled Tribe category at the all-India medical entrance test, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan of his hostel room on Saturday.  Anil Kumar Meena, 22, was reportedly struggling to cope with the English-medium teaching at the institute. His friends and family...

Maoist leader Kishan is dead but he has left behind a “ghost village” that even the new Bengal government has been unable to breathe back to life. The story of Salpatra, a village of mostly Muslim families near Jhargram town, is not one of usual black-and-white administrative inaction but of how acts of unspeakable brutality and an element of political mistrust can keep empty an entire village not more than 150km...

Nine gram sewaks have committed suicide in past one year due to work stress Gram sewaks in Maharashtra have refused to give in to the high-handedness of the administration for the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) so that it can be projected as a success. Instead, they have decided to approach the high court to press for their demands like formation of a separate independent agency for the...

A 38-year-old Right to Information activist, Shiv Kumar Tiwari, who had carried out a sting operation on New Delhi Municipal Council officials and Delhi Police personnel for taking bribe leading to several arrests and also filed a complaint in the sensational MCD “ghost employees” case, has gone missing under mysterious circumstances from Ghazipur here. Mr. Tiwari, a florist who owns “Tiwari Flower.com” on Baba Kharak Singh Marg in Connaught Place, had...