Villagers on dharna at Balitutha teargassed, lathicharged About 100 people were injured when police fired rubber bullets and teargas shells, and lathi-charged hundreds of villagers in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa on Saturday afternoon to help the administration acquire land for the steel project of Posco-India. The police took action after the villagers did not respond to their orders to move away from Balitutha, the main entry point to the site earmarked...

Technology is helping public sector banks find customers in rural India. This is part of the Centre’s efforts to include villages in the organized financial system; to ensure they are not cheated of their wages. Pilots show promise   The current state of rural banking in the country is poor. A recent report, by the National Sample Survey Organization, revealed that 51.4 per cent of the 89.3 million total farmer households in...

For more than seven years, Babar Ali, 17, has been teaching children from poor families for free at a school he founded in a West Bengal village, while studying at another school. Ali opened the Ananda Shiksha Niketan at Gangapur village in Murshidabad district in 2002, when he was just nine. Today, the school has more than 800 students. Another 200 have applied to join in the next session—making it larger...

It is presumed that the industrial development in Bihar is hampered by lack of investments. Is it because of 'unproductive' government policies or an unpredictable law and order situation? And how to increase the flow of investment in the state? In order to find out answers to all such questions and debate these issues, Business Standard Hindi recently organised a roundtable in Patna. The seminar was attended by various small...

HIV/AIDS screenings on job applicants and existing employees may be banned under a proposed policy that says the infection should in no way affect employment. The National Policy on HIV/AIDS and Work Place, crafted by the Union labour ministry with the International Labour Organisation’s assistance, will form part of the HIV bill being drawn up by the health ministry. The bill seeks to make employers liable for discrimination against staff with...