It could not have been a more opportune moment. With Planning Commission under attack for being "arm-chair advisers," the Plan panel on Tuesday organised a special screening of Bollywood film, " Peepli Live", to learn lessons and sensitise senior officers and experts about ground realities and public perception. Plan panel has been drawing flak from implementing ministries of ignoring ground reality while preparing its plans. Prior to the screening of...

Contaminated water sources and the virtual absence of health care claim dozens of lives in the State, now in the grip of cholera. COME monsoon and the backward regions of Orissa are in the grip of water-borne diseases. This year too has been no different. According to official figures, 150 people had died of cholera and diarrhoea in the State as on September 15. Unofficial reports put the toll at more...

Apni kheti, apna khaad / Apna beej, apna swaad (Our own farm, our own fertiliser / Our own seeds, our own taste) -- Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi. A farmer from Tandia village in Varanasi has a solution to India's burgeoning food crisis. In a land where poverty, hunger, malnutrition and farmer suicides are rampant, Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi's innovation could work wonders. He has single-handedly developed a number of high yielding, nutritious...

Mohali/Chandigarh: *Govt refuses to give into concession demands*Deputy CM says demands unjustified*Balbir Singh Rajewal sits on hunger strike Even as the farmers from across the state on Monday launched an indefinite agitation to mount pressure on the state government to accept their demands — for a financial package to farmers and waiver of electricity bills—¿ the Punjab government refused to accept any of them. Hundreds of farmers from across the state descended...

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Sunday said that the state government is committed to achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It has prepared the District Human Development Reports on the basis of MDGs and they will be replicated in all districts soon, he said. Gracing the concluding session of the programme of the Stand up and Take Action (SUTA) to end poverty by 2015, Patnaik reiterated that poverty has been reduced...