The Trinamool Congress-led government is “suppressing freedom of expression of the people of West Bengal,” litterateur and Magsaysay awardee Mahasweta Devi said here on Monday. “The people's government has come and done something that was unimaginable in the last 64 years. The people have lost their right to assemble and express their opinion at the Metro channel,” said Mahasweta Devi, who, on earlier occasions, had come out in support of Mamata...

Jagori Baske's dramatic surrender before chief minister Mamata Banerjee recently has only added to the mystery that has surrounded the dreaded Maoist for most of her life.  When exactly did she surrender? Was it before the last assembly polls? Did Kolkata police play a crucial role? How were Jagori and her husband, Maoist comrade Rajaram Soren, clad in crisp battle fatigues if they were on the run for months? And what...

A life bound to a wheelchair, with speech inability and two heart attacks, would not seem like much of a life. But doctor Sharadkumar Dicksheet proved it wrong. In over four decades, Dicksheet performed over 2.5 lakh facial reconstructive surgeries for free. Until this winter, that is. He died on November 14 in Brooklyn, US. He was 81. Dicksheet has two daughters and a son from two marriages, neither of which lasted. What...

-The Hindu   In a volte-face that has created ripples in political circles here, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said it is now a “proven” fact that it was the Maoists who were responsible for the Jnaneswari Express sabotage. She had earlier accused the Communist Party of India (Marxist) of being behind the derailment of the train in Paschim Medinipur district on May 28, 2010, in which nearly 150 people were...

After being mired in controversies across the nation over multi-crore scams, the MGNREGA scheme hasn’t quite made headway in Bulandshahr district’s Anupshahr yet, say Bhamati Sivapalan and Yamini Deenadayalan “MGNREGA is a flop in Uttar Pradesh,” extended NGO worker Manish Sharma, as small talk, at the block development office of Anupshahr in the Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh. Despite having been in force since 2005, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment...