Four tribespeople have died in violence on the border of the north-eastern Indian states of Assam and Meghalaya. Thousands of people have been displaced in the clashes between the Rabha and Garo tribes in the past 24 hours. An indefinite curfew has been imposed on the area since midnight, but tension remained high, police said. Trouble has been brewing in the Krishnai area since Rabhas and Garos clashed on Christmas Day after a...

Onion hubs were raided across the country today and officials claimed prices tumbled Rs 5-10 as a result of the income-tax department’s action a day after the Centre urged states to counter hoarding. Calcutta’s Sealdah wholesale mart and Asansol were among the places in Bengal that saw the swoops. Similar action was seen in several towns in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had written to...

With fresh arrivals of onions from Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, Central agencies on Monday announced their decision to sell them through their outlets at Rs. 35 a kg, setting it as a benchmark price. The variety, however, was poor in quality and low in quantity. In the retail open market and retail chains, onion prices remained around Rs. 50 a kg, garlic price was unchanged between Rs. 250 and Rs. 280...

A pair of burly hands affixes several lengths of masking tape to an open brown bag. Then the same hands are shown to belong to an officer of the Chhattisgarh police; one hand holds the bag open as the other riffles through the bag's contents. “This is what we have taken,” says a voice in Hindi. When the police leave the house of Binayak Sen, an award-winning physician and human rights...

With the Union government refusing to play Santa Claus and regulate market forces, the merciless rise in onion prices threatens to mar Christmas, New Year and Makar Sankrantri festivities. With several markets reporting a further rise in prices to about Rs.85 a kg, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh intervened, by directing the Ministries of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs to take steps to bring its prices to affordable levels. According to sources, the Prime...