Opening the reply to the President's Motion of Thanks on behalf of the Left parties in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury, demanded the stopping of the “loot” of public money in the form of concessions to corporates and high-end taxpayers. This relief, worth several lakhs of rupees, should be used to narrow the rich-poor divide, he added. Calling upon the government to shift policy...

Further political unrest in Andhra Pradesh may lead to jobs and investment being moved out of the state, industry bodies have warned amid the Telangana tension. “The politicians should realise that companies have the option to move jobs elsewhere,” Som Mittal, president of software industry body Nasscom, said at the weekend. He cited how jobs were moved out of Visakhapatnam to Chennai and Pune because of the counter-Telangana protests in 2009. “We have...

If home minister P Chidambaram’s recent letter to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is any indication, it has taken the Union home ministry seven years to realise that arming civilians to fight Naxalites is a bad idea. How much longer will it take for them to realise that the current paramilitary-based approach in Chhattisgarh is similarly bound to fail? From 2003 onwards, the home ministry has followed a policy of...

If present political trends and shifts in Andhra Pradesh intensify, the State could see an election within a year. And not just over Telangana. When Chandrababu Naidu sits on a hunger fast for suffering farmers, you know something is afoot in Andhra Pradesh. Excessive rains have devastated the crops in the State. And losses have been enormous. But a farmer losing over Rs.15,000 on an acre of paddy will get less...

In a show of unanimity, the government and the Opposition parties have decided to set aside the question hour and take up a short discussion on farmers' problems on the opening day of the short session of the Legislature beginning here on Friday.The Assembly session will last till December 16, that is sittings for just six days. At a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) held here on Thursday,...