-IANS Chhattisgarh police were on Sunday yet to find a clue about Sukma district collector Alex Paul Menon, a day after he was abducted from a forested area at gun-point by Maoists while he was interacting with tribal farmers about their problems. Police officials posted in Sukma district searched certain parts of the forest area adjoining Andhra Pradesh in the early hours of Sunday to rescue the abducted 32-year-old collector. "But he...

How an image-fixated Chief Minister has bent the state’s media to his will If you haven’t heard of an income tax raid on the residential premises of Nitish Kumar’s close aide and treasurer of the ruling Janata Dal-United (JD-U), Vinay Kumar Sinha, you are not alone. Thanks to the local media, it took a while even in Patna—where the house is located—for people to get to know. This, incidentally, is the...

-The Economist West Bengal’s populist Chief Minister is doing badly. Yet she typifies shifts in power in India BUYER’S remorse is common enough in the dusty markets of Kolkata, a delightful if crumbling great city, once known as Calcutta and still capital of the state of West Bengal. Those who buy cheap plastic goods or plaster-of-Paris busts of Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal’s cultural hero, may come to regret their haste. Likewise, many who...

Not a single case has been registered under a 19-year-old law that prohibits hiring of manual scavengers and building dry latrines. The revelations come weeks after the latest census data showed 25 lakh households across the country depend on manual scavengers to remove night soil from latrines. Union social justice minister Mukul Wasnik conceded implementing the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrine (Prohibition) Act, 1993, had been “weak”. “The implementation...

-The Telegraph Srinagar’s city centre today turned bunker-free for the first time since militancy erupted two decades ago, but it coincided with a firing incident in which a policeman fell to a militant’s bullet in the old city. Sukhpal Singh, an assistant sub-inspector, was shot dead from point-blank range at Darish Kadal while on duty at the Baghyas Chattabal post. A police officer said Singh was drenched in blood when he was shifted...