-Down to Earth As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri A fatal paradox strikes Bundelkhand in the face—an overflowing wheat stock yet an overwhelming number of farmer suicides. Farmers here dread the government wheat procurement centre and the post-mortem house. In Orai, a small town in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the two are...

-Live Mint Almost all of us have, through the unfortunate experience of a relative, an acquaintance or a friend, been exposed to the trauma of suicide; personally I have been associated with such an experience thrice. This unnatural and often violent form of death left me confounded (I never saw it coming) and hugely frustrated (at the loss that could have been prevented with timely help). For more than a decade, the...

-PTI Every four minutes, one person takes his own life in this country and one in every five suicides is that of a housewife. This and other startling figures are part of a government report 'Accidental Deaths and Sucides in India 2011' released here recently. According to the report, the number of suicides have increased in 2011 by 0.7% to touch 1,35,585 compared to 1,34,599 in the previous year. West Bengal has reported the...

Punjab’s agricultural sector grew at 1.6 per cent during the 11th Plan against the national average of 3.41 per cent. The growth is tardy owing to near saturation in productivity. The rural debts in Punjab are estimated to be Rs 35,000 crore. The number of indebted rural households in Punjab is 66 per cent, third highest in the country after Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The Government of India’s debt...

-The Hindustan Times There is a widespread perception of policy paralysis in the corridors of power. The two remaining years of the UPA's term is still not too short to reverse the current drift, but time is rapidly running out. The damaged economy needs urgent fixing as does restoring the credibility of an executive racked by scandals and the absence of a sense of direction. The people of the country long...