The Planning Commission, the country’s apex planning body, is gradually reconciling to the fact that there would be no large gains in the gross budgetary support (GBS) in budget 2010-11, as the government struggles to reduce fiscal deficit. GBS is the Money the Union government allocates to various government programmes through the Union budget. “The major objective of the finance ministry is to bring down the fiscal deficit from 6.8% of...

Three persons were sent on Saturday to police custody till January 25 in connection with the murder of RTI activist Satish Shetty (39). The three were identified as Vijay Dabhade, Parshuram Telugu and Pramod Waghmore. “Dabhade is a lawyer, Waghmore is a clerk in his office, while Telugu was one of Dabhade’s clients,” Bhausaheb Andhalkar, an officer of the Pune Rural police’s local crime branch heading one of the five...

BHUBANESWAR: Widespread protests marked the visit of Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh, to a national consultation on commercialisation of Bt brinjal. In a novel method of registering their resentment to attempts to allow commercial production of Bt brinjal in the country, hundreds of women under the banner of Orissa Nari Samaj (ONS) took out a funeral procession of Bt brinjal. They set a model of Bt...

The government needs to allocate more funds for public health. The mismatch between the declared objective of universal healthcare through the public health system and the actual level of expenditure remains serious.  One of the three most important planks on which Barak Obama won the U.S. presidential election was the country’s healthcare system, which he promised to fix. Indeed, the most important legislative measure initiated by Mr. Obama so far...

During the last three years, two subjects have been consuming the attention of the world community almost to the exclusion of other equally important subjects. One is the financial crisis, which had threatened to lead to a meltdown of the global economy, and the other is the threat to orderly climate changes in the world. As we step into the second decade of the 21st century, the global financial crisis...