-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre today told the Supreme Court that political parties that received donation from Indian subsidiaries of foreign Companies could not be said to have flouted the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act as Parliament had amended the relevant provision in 2010. Neither the BJP nor the Congress had, therefore, violated the FCRA in receiving donations from the Vedanta Group's Indian subsidiaries between 2007 and 2009, the Centre contended. Hence,...

-Caravan Magazine “It was like hitting hard at the bird’s nest with a stone,” said P Somu, a Dalit migrant labourer, who travelled from Mudigubba mandal of Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh to Cochin to work. He said, “It’s the same feeling I got after I was cheated by [the agro-based retail conglomerate] AgriGold. I had sold the cow and calf I loved.” When I met Somu on 12 November 2016,...

-The Financial Express There is by now substantial agreement amongst analysts that a strategy for dal production which ensures supplies and a reasonable degree of self-reliance is sorely needed, and the country cannot go from one crisis to another without a well-worked-out policy. However, the discussion is flawed on its assessments of what governments can and cannot do and on the lack of a short and medium strategy to enhance production....

-Scroll.in The government is likely to announce a new nutrition mission with a bigger role for private Companies. The Government of India is expected to announce a National Nutrition Mission in December this year. Some glimpses of what this mission will include were revealed in a recent news item in the Economic Times. The focus seems to be on centralising production of take home rations given to young children and pregnant or...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes is unlikely to help the government suck out black money from the economy as hoarders keep a tiny portion of their ill-gotten wealth in hard cash, going by income-tax data. Cash recovery has been less than 6% of the undisclosed income seized from tax evaders, shows an HT analysis of data from tax raids from financial year 2012-13 onwards. In...