-The Business Standard The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on Wednesday called for a level playing field for getting information for auditing purposes. Pointing out that responses from government departments were often delayed, CAG Vinod Rai said “the auditor is not given the powers which a man on the street has”. He was speaking at a panel discussion at the Business Standard Annual Awards here on Wednesday. Rai was referring...

Nowhere are the argumentative Indians more visible than in the cacophony surrounding poverty estimates. Poverty is declining; inequality is increasing; no one can live on Rs 28 a day; nine per cent of Indians are poor; 70 per cent of Indians are poor. Poverty is too Important to be used as ping-pong between optimists and pessimists on the Indian economy. I am deeply disillusioned to discover that there are no certainties...

It is a myth that cancer is prevalent only in urban areas More than 5,56,000 cancer deaths occurred in India in 2010 and 71.1 per cent of those who died were aged between 30 and 69 years, says a report on cancer mortality in India, published in the March 28 issue of The Lancet. While men in the age group of 30-69 years are more likely to die of oral cancers followed...

-The Times of India Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday said he would explore the possibility of setting up a committee of CMs of the eastern states for a second green revolution in the region and praised Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal for substantial increase in rice production during the current fiscal. Replying to the debate on 2012-13 Union Budget in Rajya Sabha, Mukherjee said due to substantial increase in...

  For women, the NREGA would bring Important social gains   Not being an expert on the subject and too lazy to read all the fine print, I do not know the exact allocations under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act this year. But I gather the money has been cut down, largely because the sums allocated last year were not fully used by most states. Maybe there were other considerations...