A day after the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) said finance minister Pranab Mukherjee was considering an increase in excise duty on diesel cars, a consensus seems to be building within the government, with the oil ministry supporting the move. Following this, key stakeholders involved in taking a decision on increasing excise duty on diesel vehicles are likely to meet on Wednesday, according to three people, including a top...

-PTI The Australian government might have overturned a ban on uranium sale to India but a majority of people in the country still appear opposed to the idea of selling the mineral to New Delhi. In a new survey, a majority of Australians were found to be against the recent Labor party decision of lifting ban on Uranium sale to India with 61% opposing it. "More than 60% of Australians say they are...

Desired outcomes can be reached through a series of ‘imperfect’ small initiatives What is to be done? How can we untie the Gordian knot that has so entangled the political economy of petroleum product prices? This is the question that now exercises our most experienced politicians and our ablest economists. Most well informed people know that a country that imports 80 per cent of its oil requirements cannot de-link itself from the...

-The Hindustan Times In a first sign of dissent within the UPA government over the recent Rs. 7 hike in petrol prices, defence minister AK Antony on Tuesday said it was “not a correct step”. Antony's remarks came soon after he landed at Neyyattinkara in Kerala to campaign for Congress candidate R Selvaraj for the June 2 assembly by-elections. “The hike in petrol price was not a correct step. The oil companies should...

By not resolving the definition of ‘public purpose,' the Land Acquisition Bill keeps the door open for misuse It has taken more than 110 years for the government to draft a new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill. But despite mounting evidence of widespread misuse of government authority in taking over farm land and the increasing protests against the legal ambiguity that abets such exploitative practices, the revised legislation remains dubiously...