-PTI NEW DELHI: The Planning Commission today approved a plan size of Rs 16,626 crore for Delhi for 2013-14, up 4.8 per cent from the previous fiscal. It was at Rs 15,862 crore for 2012-13. The plan size was decided here at a meeting between Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Delhi Chief Minister Delhi Sheila Dikshit. "We have reviewed all aspects of the Delhi economy. Citizen services in Delhi over...

-The Business Standard USFDA's zero tolerance policy requires our drug firms to reorient not just processes but organisational cultures to serve that market credibly The following two quotes from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) news releases may help put the Ranbaxy controversy in perspective. The first sums up what it is that drives the FDA and the second is typical of the challenge the pharmaceutical industry faces. (1) "The consent...

-Frontline The Central government's proposal to hand over the supply of supplementary nutrition to NGOs in the name of "community participation" is surely an invitation for private profiteering on the back of this supposedly public scheme. ENSURING safe and healthy conditions for the reproduction of the population is obviously the most fundamental requirement of any society. So the progress of a society can be determined (and indeed is routinely judged) by the...

-The Economic Times Arvind Panagariya, a professor of Indian economics at Columbia University, hits out at Nobel laureate and Harvard University professor Amartya Sen over his call to confront MPs with the "number of deaths" a delayed Food Security Bill can cause. The former chief economist at the Asian Development Bank counters Sen's argument that it is high social spending that has contributed to the economic growth of Asian economies such...

-The Hindu   Investment in a scheme that guarantees rural employment with minimum wages should be seen as complementary and not alternative to development activities A recent paper by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has argued that the "push" factors of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are not as important as the economic growth "pull" factors, for increasing agricultural wages. The paper has received wide media...