-The Hindu Building on the work by RTI activists, India needs to set up a mechanism that can make for accountability on the sources and utilisation of party funds Throughout the world, political parties collect funds to build and sustain the organisation, to train party cadres and fight elections. Recognising that they are the main link to the citizens (as voters) and, by implication, the mainstay of democracy, many countries, including India,...

-The Indian Express The I&B Ministry is planning to generate real-time data on what the 120 million TV viewing households are watching by putting a chip into the set top boxes (STB). The move comes at a time when dominant television ratings company, TAM Media Research, is facing the heat from the Competition Commission of India (CCI). The move may also raise privacy concerns and invite protests from rights activists but ministry...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Competition Commission of India is investigating if rating company TAM Media Research Pvt Ltd abused its dominant position in violation of the Competition act. It has asked the company to furnish details on whether it has imposed conditions of exclusive supply that resulted in foreclosure of the market for competitors and provide details if it had created entry barriers, including regulatory ones. TAM has been given...

-Reuters BRUSSELS: Nine drugmakers, including Denmark's Lundbeck and India's Ranbaxy, were fined a total of 146 million euros by EU antitrust regulators on Wednesday for blocking the supply of a cheaper anti-depressant medicine to the market. The punishments follow a 2009 report by the European Commission on the pharmaceutical sector, which said "pay-for-delay" deals lead to consumers paying as much as 20 percent more for their medicines. The EU action came two days...

-Frontline Corruption tends to be greater in periods when there is a state-engineered redistribution of wealth in favour of a few at the explicit or implicit expense of the many. Liberalisation is one such period. IT cannot be verified and may not be true. But, the view that the record of graft and corruption during the two-term, nine-year rule of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is the worst in India's post-Independence...