-The Tribune   Muktsar: The state government has issued compensation to farmers whose crops were affected due to water-logging in various villages falling in the Gidderbaha assembly segment. Some farmers have been issued cheques for as less as Rs 18.75 as compensation for two years. While some farmers refused to accept the cheques, others said the government had played a cruel joke on them. Aspal Singh, a farmer of Gurusar village, who received a...

-Down to Earth   Reserve Bank of India refuses to bail out three district cooperative banks Kharif sowing season is close at hand, but around 100,000 farmers of Nagpur, Wardha and Buldhana districts in Maharashtra are unlikely to get agricultural loan or hailstorm relief from the District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) because the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has rejected banking applications of these banks. Worse, fixed deposits worth Rs 1,716 crore belonging...

-The Indian Express     Mumbai: It's been eight months since the state government launched ‘Manodhairya Yojana', a scheme to provide monetary relief and rehabilitation for rape and acid attack victims, including women and children. But with little advocacy, lack of counsellors in civic-run hospitals, poor post-trauma support as mandated by the scheme, and most importantly, policy apathy, ‘Manodhairya' risks being a laudable scheme just on paper. AAMIR KHAN and TABASSUM BARNAGARWALA speak...

-Down to Earth   People of West Bengal's Sunderbans region are setting up grain banks to safeguard against food crisis Subedan Bibi's mud hut is a few metres from the banks of the Bakchara river, a distributary of the Hugli in Sunderbans region of South 24 Parganas. When the river is in spate she and most others of Goyadham village move to the main market in the nearby block. "Floods and storms destroy...

-Deccan Herald Behind all the ostentation, glitz and glamour of the recently concluded mega ‘Progressive Agriculture Summit' in Punjab lies the harsh reality of farmer suicides and the burgeoning agrarian crisis that this border state reels under. A state government commissioned study conducted by three prominent universities in Punjab lay bare the magnitude of the crisis. On an average estimate, three persons committed suicide every two days in last one decade in...