-Live Mint The current policy on compensating landowners could adversely affect character of India’s future growth The Parliament is currently considering a land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement Bill (LARR Bill), as are various state legislatures. These are likely to affect the pace and character of future growth in India in a significant way.  Setting up new industries, service establishments and real estate development will inevitably require land to be acquired from rural areas....

-The Indian Express Competitive politics within the legislature is threatening to undermine the space and legitimacy of executive authorities to implement social and economic policies in the country. The Congress-led UPA may have been weakened to a point where any observation by the CAG becomes a millstone around its neck, even if the CAG is seen as excessive in the way he interprets the alleged lapses by the government. The danger...

-The Telegraph A government laboratory has detected cancer-causing fungal toxins exceeding safety limits in samples of ultra-high-temperature processed milk, suggesting that a contamination problem highlighted eight years ago remains unresolved. Scientists at the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore, have found a compound called aflatoxin M1, a fungal product labelled a carcinogen, in about 20 per cent of the samples of UHT milk they examined. Earlier studies in India over the past...

-The Hindu ‘Competitive bidding would favour private players, give rise to monopolies’ Even as the controversy over the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s (CAG) report on coal blocks allocation that reportedly caused a loss of Rs. 1.86 lakh crore to the national exchequer rages, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has said coal allocations and mining, in future, should be done through the public sector. In an article in party organ People’s Democracy, party general...

-The Indian Express While the BJP disrupted the functioning of Parliament for the second consecutive day on Wednesday demanding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s resignation for alleged failure to go for auctioning of coal blocks, at least four states that were ruled by the Opposition at the time had raised the red flag when the Centre proposed the competitive bidding route in 2005. The Centre had cited the lack of “transparency and objectivity”...