-PTI BHUBANESWAR/JAJPUR (ODISHA): People in various parts of Odisha started panic buying of salt on Monday following a rumour that it would disappear from the market, like potato, stretching the price even to Rs 60 a kg. Hit hard by the ongoing potato pinch for the last several days, people made a beeline to grocery shops to buy as much salt as they could, thus leading to mad scenes in the...

-The Indian Express Kolkata: The humble potato comes a poor second to pricey onion in State matters. But that was before Mamata Banerjee wielded the knife. Over the past couple of days, the West Bengal Police, directed by the Chief Minister, has seized thousands of trucks carrying potatoes to neighbouring states such as Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar. Mamata's provocation was the rise in the price of the vegetable back home. However, while...

-The Hindustan Times I remember her face but not her name. She was one of the 30 people I met one winter afternoon in 2009 at Basaguda village in Chhattisgarh's Maoist-hit Bijapur district. A thin, tall woman, she stood at the edge of the group, listening attentively to her neighbour who was narrating an incident of an armed attack on the village that had left them homeless for months. When my...

-The Hindu A unique cell phone-based networking system in Chhattisgarh helps Adivasi Gonds share local news and air grievances. Deep in the jungles of Chhattisgarh, a straightforward, earthy man named Naresh Bunkar, field co-ordinator of the Adivasi Santha Manch, picks up his mobile phone and dials +918050068000, a long-distance number in Bangalore. He immediately cuts off and waits. Within seconds, he gets a call from the dialled number, and he hears a...

-Live Mint In the past year, ration cards are being replaced with smartcards that can track food doled out through the PDS system New Delhi: Mohanlal Kapoor, a street vendor in north India, holds a card entitling him to subsidized food for his wife and four children. To get supplies, the Kapoors must battle an estimated 15 million families in their state toting similar pieces of paper that they're not entitled...