Investigations say they have already mopped up a “massive amount” — running into “hundreds of crores” — as unpaid taxes from among the 700 numbered bank accounts held by Indians in HSBC Bank in Geneva in the ongoing scrutiny of what is considered a sprawling black money trail. In fact, Rs 40 crore has been recovered from Delhi-based account holders and Rs 60 crore from just one account holder in Chennai...

In this Idea Exchange moderated by Senior Editor Archna Shukla, I&B minister Ambika Soni speaks about self-regulation by the media, empowering the Press Council of India and the Congress party’s stand on corruption Archna Shukla: There is a growing perception that the government is unhappy with media criticism. The editor of a leading English daily publicly claimed that government advertisements have been stopped to his publication. Is the government being vindictive? I have...

Jharkhand has produced more rice than it needs this season, thanks to the monsoon bounty after three consecutive years of drought, enabling the state to set up procurement centres in all 24 districts for the first time. Till now dependent on Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh for its annual requirement of around 20 lakh tonne of par boiled, or usna, rice, Jharkhand is likely to log a bumper harvest of 35-37...

'Economic growth will need massive energy. Will we allow an accident in Japan, in a 40-year-old reactor at Fukushima, arising out of extreme natural stresses, to derail our dreams to be an economically developed nation?' Every single atom in the universe carries an unimaginably powerful battery within its heart, called the nucleus. This form of energy, often called Type-1 fuel, is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times more powerful...

Thanks to the policy of reservation, the representation of Scheduled Castes in higher-level government jobs has increased nearly eight times in the last 45 years while the proportion of Scheduled Tribes has shown an almost 20-fold jump. The proportion of SCs in Group A government jobs was only 1.64 per cent at the beginning of 1965. That had risen to 12.5 per cent by January 2008. Similarly, the share of STs...