India may keep on hold plans to raise prices of subsidised food grains for welfare schemes to cut its subsidy bill, unwilling to take an unpopular step when inflation remains high, a government source said on Thursday. The senior food ministry official, who did not wish to be identified, told Reuters the proposal was before the Union cabinet and “seems to be put in abeyance for the moment”. He was responding to...

The Food Security Bill is going to be taken up afresh by the empowered group of ministers on Monday, on the back of relentless demands from activists to widen the ambit of the bill, with regard to quantum of ration and number of beneficiaries. The EGoM, headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, will examine the draft in light of demands to increase monthly entitlement of foodgrain from 25kg provided for...

Kaushik Basu, the current Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, had a 15-year-long stint as Professor of Economics at Cornell University. The Padma Bhushan awardee has been working closely with the Finance Ministry and the Prime Minister to chart the country’s future growth path. He spoke to MANAV CHOPRA about the need for better monitoring to ensure growth doesn’t happen at the expense of social justice. Excerpts: A common...

What is a whistleblower protection law? A whistleblower is defined as someone who exposes wrongdoing, fraud, corruption or mismanagement. In many cases, this could be a person who works for the government who would report misconduct within the government or it could be an employee of a private company who reports corrupt practices within the company. The law that a government enacts to protect such persons who help expose corruption...

The National Advisory Council is back with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi at its head, promising to give a strong fillip to the UPA government's social sector agenda that is at the heart of the party's political strategy to consolidate its 'aam admi' base. The revival of the NAC, that had folded up following Sonia's resignation after the office-of-profit controversy, has been on the cards since the Supreme Court gave its...