-The Indian Express Unfinished car shells rusting in a deserted factory in India's West Bengal state lie testimony to flaws in a century-old land-acquisition law the government now wants to replace. * Jobs, housing, cash to landowners made mandatory * Costs, project delays to increase - Indian corporates react * Bill to push up costs by 350 pct for big plots - analysts, cos * Bill likely to be passed in December Tata Motors was forced...

What is government planning to do with the Public Distribution System (PDS)? The answer lies in an old adage: Give a dog bad name and hang him! The common impression is that the PDS is not working because of pilferage and hence it is taken as a foregone conclusion that it needs to be replaced with cash transfer. Two empirical studies conducted recently, one of them by noted economists Jean Dreze...

Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen. His name, year of birth and address were recorded. A worker guided Mr. Gangar’s rough fingers to the glowing green surface of a scanner to record his fingerprints. He peered into an iris scanner shaped like binoculars that...

-The Telegraph   The Comptroller and Auditor General has found gross deficiencies by the food and supplies department when the Left was in power in Bengal. The CAG report for 2009-2010 says the state food and supplies department could not claim central subsidy worth Rs 133.66 crore as it failed to furnish annual accounts of the public distribution system for the period 2005-2010. The report also says the finance department, through which the Centre...

The anti-corruption campaigns that has brought politicians and businessmen under the scanner-especially their links with the builder community being exposed in recent scams-has got the real estate sector worried. A number of industry insiders and sleuths have confirmed that the flow of unaccounted money (or black money) in the system, a big source of funding for the sector facing funds crunch, will get disrupted. An unhealthy nexus between builders and politicians...