The Dantewada police have arrested Essar group's General Manager for Kirandul, D.V.C.S. Verma, as part of an ongoing investigation into allegations of the company routinely paying the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) significant sums of money to operate in rebel-controlled territory. This is the first time that an individual, directly employed by Essar, has been arrested in this connection. The group has denied allegations that it paid protection money to...

IN preparing the approach paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission engaged “all interested persons” in the country in a wide, web-based consultative exercise and also involved a varied group of “stakeholders”. The resulting document clearly indicates some awareness of the complex problems likely to be faced by the economy in the coming period. But it falls short of expectations because it does not provide a cohesive...

According to the Maharashtra government's own figures, 18,486 children in the age group of 0-6 years have died of malnutrition this year alone (Jan-August 2011). The figure is quite high, say health ministry sources. In 2010, 12,792 children had died of hunger and malnutrition during the same period. But this year, 5,694 more babies than last year have starved to death. Most of the dead babies are adivasi children. The...

Updating the poverty line cutoff figures, the Planning Commission said that those spending in excess of Rs 32 a day in urban areas or Rs 26 a day in villages would no longer be eligible to draw benefits for those living below the poverty line. TOI broke down the overall monthly figure for urban areas and used the CPI for industrial workers along with the Tendulkar committie report figures to see...

More than 100 days after she had suffered spinal injuries during the police crackdown on Baba Ramdev's protest camp at Ramlila Ground in June this year, a 51-year-old supporter of the yoga guru died in hospital on Monday morning. The victim, Rajbala, had been on ventilator support at the ICU of GB Pant Hospital. "The patient died of cardiac arrest. She had suffered fracture and dislocation of cervical C4 and C5...