In the first example of his intention to take “difficult decisions” to contain the ballooning subsidy burden to control the fiscal deficit, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday denied permission to food minister KV Thomas for about 26.5 million tonnes of additional food grain allocation to states at subsidised rates over the normal allocation that would have cost the exchequer Rs 32,794 crore of food subsidy.   “It will have to be...

The arrest of Syed Mohammad Ahmad Kazmi in connection with the bomb attack on an Israeli embassy car raises many questions. AN uneasy silence fills the streets of B.K. Dutt Colony near the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. Named after the revolutionary freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt, who, along with Bhagat Singh, threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929, the nondescript colony has been...

-Rediff.com Press Council Chairman Justice Markandey Katju on Saturday said anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare lacks the scientific ideas that are needed to solve the problem of graft. The PCI chairman also took a dig at the media for "hyping" up issues such as the 100th century of Sachin Tendulkar, retirement of Rahul Dravid, pregnancy of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and death of film star Dev Anand. "This Anna Hazare movement, I have not spoken...

-CNN-IBN Kottayam, the first town in the country to experiment with total literacy programme, the first to have a printing press in the state and the first to have a college in the state, is in the limelight again. The first-ever Manav Vikas India Human Development Award instituted by the Planning Commission and the UNDP zeroed in on the Kottayam District Human Development Report for its excellent quality of analysis. The report was...

-The Economic Times India on Thursday voted in favour of a US-sponsored censure motion against Sri Lanka in the 47-member UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. The government's domestic political compulsions seems to have prevailed over the country's strategic interests. Twenty-four countries, including India, voted for the resolution and 15 against, while eight nations abstained. Among the countries which voted against the resolution were China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Maldives. India's decision was...