If you can’t beat them, join them. The fight for land between villagers and industrialists gets a unique twist in coal-rich belts of Karanpura valley — comprising cheek by jowl blocks Barkagaon and Keredari (Hazaribagh) and Tandwa (Chatra) — with residents asking the Centre’s permission to commercially exploit the area’s natural resources instead of allowing investors from outside. Karanpura is the state’s green bowl for vegetables, but it sits on rich coal...

Writer and activist Arundhati Roy, winner of the 1997 Man Booker prize for “The God of Small Things,” is undoubtedly India’s iconoclast no.1. During the launch of her two latest books—“Broken Republic” and “Walking With the Comrades” —on Friday evening, she came to the defence of the military tactics of India’s Maoists in her polemical best: “When you have 800 CRPF [Central Reserve Police Force, a paramilitary force deployed to fight...

-The Telegraph   Rural job scheme activist Niyamat Ansari was beaten to death by Maoists as a group of middlemen stood and watched, a report on the March 2 killing has pointed out, indicating once again that implementation of MGNREGS in Jharkhand leaves a lot to be desired. Armed with the report, a committee constituted by Union rural development ministry today met chief minister Arjun Munda and his deputy Sudesh Mahto, requesting...

The Centre has held back Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme funds earmarked for Latehar and Bokaro in light of recent murders of a labourer and activist, but agreed to release dues for 2011-12 fiscal for other districts of Jharkhand, a state already under the scanner for poor implementation of the flagship job scheme. State MGNREGS commissioner Ajoy Kumar Singh, who is in Delhi to pursue the matter, told The...

The curiosum of a ‘red regime’ with a knack to get re-elected term after term for over more than three decades within the ambit of a full-fledged multi-party democracy has finally disappeared. The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has not merely lost the poll in West Bengal, it has been made mincemeat of. Its vote share has come down from close to 50 per cent...