There is a new twist to the alleged suicide of Bilaspur SP Rahul Sharma. One of the officer’s closest friends has said that a week before Sharma allegedly shot himself, he had fretted about being made to do “begaar” (literally, forced labour), and that he had been given a “target” for “election expenses”. Sharma was found dead at the Bilaspur police officers’ mess on March 12. A day later, IG G...

India’s rural hinterland is catching up with urban areas in the use of electricity as the main source of lighting, in access to banking facilities and tap water for drinking, bridging the old rural-urban divide. The housing, households amenities and assets census for 2011 once again showed that rural India is fast converting into a more urbanised society. “It is part of the process of development that areas left behind eventually...

The latest round of data on the 2011 Census shows that the country is exhibiting distinct signs of trading up as material living conditions improve for large sections of the population. Although this aggregate picture is not uniform across the country, analysts believe that the upward material mobility in society is creating the basis of a new consumer boom in the economy—serving up a perfect backdrop ahead of the presentation of...

-The Hindu   Dr. Manmohan Singh Prime Minister of India March 12, 2012 Dear Prime Minister, We welcome the tabling of a National Food Security Bill in the Lok Sabha as an important step towards the elimination of hunger and undernutrition in India. However, we feel that the Bill in its current form has some serious shortcomings. We are writing to propose a simpler and more effective framework for the Public Distribution System (PDS), which requires...

-The Hindustan Times A day after a first-year MBBS student was found hanging in his hostel room at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), undergraduate students boycotting classes and other training programmes and sat outside the director’s office all day. A 2010 batch student, Anil Kumar Meena  failed to pass all three subjects in the first year. His attendance was also short, because of which the administration asked him...