-The Times of India MADURAI: In what may come as a surprise package to the farming community, the number of farmers in Madurai district has increased marginally, even as there is a decline at the national level. In 2001, there were 3.1 lakh land holdings or farmers for a population of 25.78 lakh in the district. But now, the number has gone up to 3.28 lakh against a population of...

-The Hindustan Times   Indians lost valuables worth Rs. 35,257 crore to thieves, robbers and cheats in the past 10 years, reveal statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau for 2002-2011. That is equivalent to the Delhi government's annual budget or what it last year took to run the national rural employment guarantee scheme which benefited 4.8 crore households. The national average for recovery was just about 20% ( Rs. 7,953 crore) of the...

-PTI The Home Ministry has sought opinion of the state governments on the move to protect a threatened witness or any person involved in the justice system The government is mulling to introduce a witness protection programme based on best international models for guaranteeing anonymity to those who depose in courts against powerful accused in criminal cases. The Home Ministry has sought opinion of the state governments on the move to protect a...

-The Telegraph A village awaits doomsday By Jaideep Hardikar, Penguin, Rs 299 Why is the year, 2011, important? It is important for some states like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, for it marked a change of government. But it is important, nationally, for the reason that 2011 was a census year. The data for Census 2011 has come, recently, into the public domain - which shows that our farmer population is shrinking....

-The Hindu   As TRAI prepares to regulate ownership of news organisations to ensure pluralism, big media houses fear shrinking profits and state control by proxy Rahul Khullar, the straight-talking chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), listened attentively to the senior management executive of Bennett Coleman and Co. Limited, one of India's largest media conglomerates. The latter disagreed with the premise of the discussion - that there was a "problem,"...