-Macroscan.com In his speech introducing the 2012-13 budget, the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had declared his intention to introduce a General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) to counter ''aggressive tax avoidance schemes''. What GAAR means is that even if a transaction appears to be legally valid, if it is entered into for the sole purpose of tax avoidance, then the Indian tax authorities can deny tax benefit to the concerned entity. GAAR...

-Live Mint/ The Wall Street Journal Contributions more than doubled between 2004 and 2009 polls; experts say published figures just tip of the iceberg  Contributions, including money from top companies, to the country’s two largest political parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), more than doubled between the 2004 and 2009 general elections. This revelation affirms a trend of companies, most of which are listed, opting for a transparent route to...

-The Hindu The fireworks that light up the night sky during Diwali bear no trace of the hazardous working conditions in their place of origin: Sivakasi and its surrounding villages in southern Tamil Nadu. The tragic death of nearly 38 workers and onlookers at a fireworks unit in Mudalipatti village on Wednesday is another gruesome reminder of the dangers lurking behind small-scale cracker factories that neglect laws and rules in the...

-People's Democracy IT seems the Sheila Dixit government of Delhi, backed by powerful elements in the UPA-2 central government, will let nothing stand in the way of water privatisation in the capital. Several earlier attempts going back many years to fully or partially privatise distribution of water, especially the big loan application to the World Bank in 2005, were foiled by vigilant community organisations, public interest groups, trade unions and political...

-The Hindustan Times The coal-block allocation scandal is increasingly looking like a sequel to the 2G spectrum scam as far as the behaviour of the companies involved is concerned. As was with the telecom scam, many of the “coalgate” companies that cornered the government-allocated resource — like the spectrum — have used it to raise money from the market at hefty valuations. Promoters of more than 10 companies are believed to have...