Quite often it is argued by mainstream economists that a sizeable chunk of the Union Budget every year is wasted because the Government spends that on food and fertiliser subsidies. The burgeoning size of these two subsidies relative to the entire budget as well as the gross domestic product (GDP) is often used to build the argument that economic as well as environmental sustainability of the country is at stake...

-The Hindu The government’s announced fiscal policy stance and the fiscal regime it is running seem contradictory There used to be a time — and this was well before India began to globalise — when each Union Budget announced sales tax increases on tobacco products, especially cigarettes. The demand for cigarettes being somewhat inelastic, the rise in tax was expected to be a shot in the arm for the revenue-starved government of...

-PTI/ The Telegraph Family members claim it was an inflated one while the state-run power company says victim had never been billed since he had taken a borewell connection in 2010 Patna: A Bihar farmer who received an electricity bill for around Rs 50,000 in December and paid Rs 25,000 after taking loans hanged himself on Thursday after power officials insisted on full payment, his family said. Family members of 48-year-old Dinesh Singh...

-NDTV blog If you had invested all your savings in the stock market at the end of March last year, by now, you would have almost doubled your money. But in the same period, India's GDP in today's prices would have slid by at least 9-10 percent. Anyone who looks at this divergence will say that the markets have completely 'decoupled' from the economy. Conventional wisdom tells us that this is a...

-The Indian Express Proposals for the remaining 755, which include 39 untraceable water bodies, are being sought and agencies have been asked to submit them by the end of this month, a Delhi government official said. The Delhi Wetland Authority has sought action plans from land-owning and maintenance agencies for revival of more than 1,000 water bodies in the capital, including lakes, ponds and wells. Details compiled by the authority show that...