When Mamata Banerjee defeated the Communist Party of India (Marxist) last May after 34 years of power in West Bengal, her victory was portrayed by optimists as the beginning of a Kolkata Spring. Free of the communists’ rural thugs and urban heelers, the story went, the state would finally enter the 21st century. One year after Banerjee’s landslide, however, the new boss is looking a lot like the old one —...

Over the past week, I’ve chronicled my investigative research on starvation in India – a project I’ve been working on with a colleague from the Centre for Equity Studies, a New Delhi think tank. We’ve told stories of people who were forced to eat poisoned roots to stay alive; a family that suffered the deaths of members from three different generations in a span of 24 hours; a woman faced with...

Two Congress ministers, both known to be pro-poor, have locked horns over an unusual proposal. Union food minister K V Thomas has suggested that part of the wages under the job-guarantee scheme be paid in foodgrains. But, Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh thinks the move could wreck the flagship scheme since it is an improvisation on the Food for Work programme of 1970s. The RD minister thinks MNREGA could go...

-The Telegraph   The Congress leadership today took care not to rub Mamata Banerjee the wrong way despite its apparent unease over a cartoon episode that led to the arrest of a professor in Bengal. There were instructions from the top to exercise restraint and spokespersons were told to avoid making any direct comment. At the official briefing, party spokesperson Manish Tiwari repeatedly said he was not aware of the details and making...

As food and civil supplies minister in the previous SP regime, Raja Bhaiya swindled Rs 100 crore from the PDS. As he presides over the food ministry once again, Ashish Khetan exposes the shocking loot A LITTLE MORE than a month ago, Akhilesh Yadav, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, earned a landslide victory on the idea of hope: Ummeed ki cycle. He had promised clean governance and a corruption-free government. When...