-The Economic Times The government is pushing ahead with long-awaited reforms to boost finances of cash-strapped power utilities and to reduce food subsidy by raising the price of sugar in ration shops, but the cabinet meeting to consider these moves has been deferred to next week. Sources said the government was also considering a proposal to increase the dearness allowance for central government employees by about 7%. This should come as a...

-Economic and Political Weekly  The Government of India is considering a proposal to notify farming as an essential service. This is ostensibly to bring drought relief to farmers suffering from a weak monsoon - a laudable goal indeed. However, if farming is deemed an "essential service", farmers and farm workers could lose many of their political and civic rights because the government can then invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act to...

-PTI Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today said the ground water level in the country is decreasing and there is an urgent need to check this through encouraging micro irrigation. "The ground water table in the country has come down in the last few years and in order to check this we should work with technologies like drip and sprinkler irrigation, which minimises loss of water," Pawar said in his inaugural address at...

-The Times of India Putting health over revenue, the Delhi government on Monday announced a ban on all gutka products in the capital. The ban, which includes sale, manufacture, distribution, transportation, display and storage of these products, is expected to take effect in a day or two. The ban will cover pan masalas containing tobacco and other packaged chewing tobacco products. "Our government was always in favour of putting a ban on gutka...

-The Economic Times At a time when the Rangarajan committee is giving final touches to its recommendations on sugar deregularisation, The Union food ministry has come up with two proposals for fixing new retail price of sugar sold in ration shops (levy sugar) to reduce the food subsidy bill. According to the first proposal, the food ministry has recommended to free up the prices of levy sugar and allow state governments to...