A survey of the Supreme Court’s docket finds a court overwhelmed by petitions from those with money and resources.  THE Indian Supreme Court has a reputation for being a “people’s court” or, as one judge put it, a “last resort for the oppressed and bewildered”. The Constitution gives all Indians the right to petition directly the Supreme Court if their fundamental rights are violated and the right to appeal to...

During the last 10 days two land acquisition notifications have been set aside. The Punjab and Haryana High Court (HC) has quashed a Haryana government’s 2002 notification for inappropriately releasing land to private developers. Similarly, the Allahabad High Court has repealed a UP government’s notification under which land was acquired for a private project in 2005. Both notifications have been cancelled on account of procedural lapses. However, these rulings highlight...

Why is the government aggressively attacking and destroying inexpensive eco-friendly technologies and promoting pollution-friendly ones? Are we obliged to repeat all the mistakes that the West committed in its pursuit of economic growth? While it makes sense to corner First World countries into investing in eco- friendly technologies to control carbon emissions, as was attempted at Copenhagen, the stand of the Indian government that India cannot afford to enforce better...

Of Indian households’ total annual income, 0.22 per cent is spent on buying newspapers — that is, if total national household annual income was Rs 100, 22 paise would be set aside for newspapers. Paying off bank loans (expenditure under equated monthly instalments) takes up 1.4 per cent of total household annual income. The share of health expenditure is 1.5 per cent, and that of education expenditure, 3.21 per cent....

The Prime Minister's economic adviser, C Rangarajan, wants the Reserve Bank to remove excess money from the system to check rising prices as food inflation neared the decade's high of 20 per cent. "We need to see that liquidity does not put inflationary pressures and for that some action on the monetary front would also be required," said Rangarajan, Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) and a former...