The growth rate of agriculture was three per cent and that of manufacturing was 4.5 per cent during the first three decades after independence. The growth rate for agriculture has slipped to 2.8 per cent while that for manufacturing has increased to 6.4 per cent during the last 15 years. Farmers continue to commit suicides across the country. The groundwater level is declining. The country has to import wheat, edible...

There were few takers among women in west bengal for jobs granted under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) in the fiscal year ended March. Women took up only 33% of the 153.4 million man-days of jobs granted in west bengal under the scheme, much lower than the national average, which was at 47-48%. In Kerala and Tamil Nadu, women accounted for 85% and 81%, respectively of jobs...

A MARRIAGE hall in Kolkata is packed with 1200 of India’s poorest citizens. They have trekked here from all over west bengal, from remote forests and dingy alleyways, from Howrah, East Midnapore, South 24 Parganas. They have come because there is a story to tell, a brutal story that may otherwise never be told. Finally, there are people willing to hear. These people may never bring justice; may never be...

The west bengal government has decided to distribute land, free of cost, to poor farmers and landless agricultural labourers by buying land from willing landowners, offering them a price which may be higher than the market value. More than two lakh families are likely to be benefited by this step, which is expected to add an important dimension to the sphere of land reforms. Finance Minister Asim Kumar Dasgupta told The...

If you want to understand why the Maoists grow stronger, watch frail Shyam Charan Kisku, 5, as he keeps hunger away by nibbling at a wild berry called Kendu on a hot April afternoon. Kisku and 40-odd children in this scraggly village of mud-and-thatch homes, 180km south-east of Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi, did not get their free lunch this day under the national mid-day meal scheme, the world’s largest cooked-meal programme. Kisku’s mother,...