West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday threatened to bring her anger to the streets of New Delhi and launch an agitation in the capital if the Centre didn't give in to her demand for a moratorium on debt repayment. In a rare and exclusive interview to TOI at the Writers' Buildings in Kolkata, the Trinamool Congress chief didn't once utter the words "threat" or "pullout", but her message was...

Burdwan, April 25: The cash-strapped government has been spending almost Rs 1 crore annually on a state-owned dairy in Burdwan lying defunct for the past four years. The 62 employees at Burdwan Dugdhagar have been drawing their Salaries with virtually no work though the Trinamul government is working on a plan to hand over the unit to another state-owned milk producing unit. An official said the Burdwan dairy produced 20,000 litres of...

A Union finance ministry panel is likely to call Bengal’s top officials next week to discuss the request for a debt recast. This will be preceded by a meeting of a Trinamul Congress parliamentary delegation with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. Bengal, Kerala and Punjab have been officially dubbed debt-stressed states. A panel headed by expenditure secretary Sumit Bose has been tasked to look into the problems of...

-The Economic Times At the peak of Anna Hazare fever last year, anybody disagreeing with his message or prescription was branded pro-corruption. Over the last few weeks, anybody expressing disappointment at the Supreme Court upholding the Right to Education (RTE) Act is being branded anti-poor or elitist. This is unfair and unnecessary: dissent is not treason. The supporters of Anna and RTE have similar traits: impatient, intellectually certain and more interested in...

Job card holders say they did not get wages   Residents of villages in Seege Gram Panchayat in Hassan taluk alleged at a social audit meet here on Saturday that there were irregularities in the implementation of schemes under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The Bangalore-based Association for Social Transparency, Rights and Action (ASTRA), a non-governmental organisation, conducted the audit, and employees from the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat...