About a year since the hailstorm and subsequent high-vaulted promise of compensation by the state government, hundreds of farmers continue to wait for the succour. The storm wiped out their hope of paying off private and government-sector debt and keeping the kitchen running. The wheat was ready for harvest in 23 villages of Moga district when rain took a toll on it. The revenue department assessed the loss but there's no...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Tuesday was at a loss to understand why convict Dhananjoy Chatterjee's execution was swift, but a lot of political muscle flexing was on show when it came to Beant Singh's killer Balwant Singh Rajoana, who is slated to be hanged on March 31. The controversy over Rajoana's death sentence reached the apex court on Tuesday with a NGO Lawyers for Human Rights International seeking...

The purpose of this piece is not to defend the Planning Commission on poverty figures but to indicate that the methodologies have evolved over time after considerable research and they are useful for policy purposes if not for linking with entitlement programmes (some of us have written earlier that the poor and vulnerable are more numerous than the commission's poverty figures and these should be delinked from entitlement programmes).  The commission...

The arrest of Syed Mohammad Ahmad Kazmi in connection with the bomb attack on an Israeli embassy car raises many questions. AN uneasy silence fills the streets of B.K. Dutt Colony near the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. Named after the revolutionary freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt, who, along with Bhagat Singh, threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929, the nondescript colony has been...

-PTI A day after home minister P Chidambram said there was "some ulterior motive" behind continued protest against Kudankulam nuclear plant despite government assurance, convener of People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy SP Udayakumar said the protesters were "ready" for talks. "We are ready for talks. If we are considered people of this country and if our ahimsa protest is respected, government should talk to us. They should treat us like Indian...