-The Indian Express The UPA’s cash transfer scheme — delivering over Rs.3.2 lakh crore in subsidies and welfare programmes to the poor, directly to their bank accounts — has raised fears in many quarters about the capacity of a rickety state apparatus to cope with messy implementation issues. Our collective self-confidence about being able to implement any new policy is so low today, we seem to be paralysed by the mere...

-Reuters India’s efforts to clamp down on illegal mining have handed a $15 billion lifeline to global iron ore giants, and there could be more to come. Steps taken by central and state authorities to clean up the mining and export of iron ore have shut down output in two key producing states, slashing shipments and forcing steel mills to import a raw material the country has in abundance. Now the Shah Commission,...

-The Hindu Cleansing political parties and elections of illegal money is the first step towards tackling the evil of graft Corruption is nothing but a reflection of the distribution of power within societies. The country is where it is because the political system is self-perpetrating and no party is accountable to anyone except a coterie of people that dominates all decisions. Unless the political system is accountable, going after individual cases of...

-The Telegraph The Union cabinet today approved a controversial drug pricing policy that had been opposed by the health ministry, the finance ministry and public health policy experts who fear it will legitimise high prices of medicines. A government source said the cabinet has cleared the drug pricing policy that health experts suspect will determine caps on prices of 348 drugs through a formula based on market prices of drugs rather than...

-The Business Standard Deconstructing the numbers shows companies have bid smartly to get the best deals The recently concluded sale of 1,800-MHz spectrum through auction to telecom service operators, or telcos, has been declared a damp squib for two reasons: One, only five telcos participated in the auction; and two, the bids added up to Rs 9,407 crore, which was less than a third of the Rs 30,000 crore the government had...