Mining will hurt biodiversity and discourage development of coal technology If coal mining is allowed in heavily forested areas today, it could deprive the country of a strategic energy reserve for the future, according to the Environment Ministry. It would also go against the Forest Conservation Act, invite judicial intervention, hurt biodiversity and discourage the development of coal technology. These are among the arsenal of arguments unsheathed by the Ministry to counter...

India's food prices are likely to ease, bringing down food inflation from stubbornly high levels, over the next two months as supplies of onions and other vegetables are expected to pick up, industry officials said Thursday. The country's food inflation rate surged to more than 18% in December as vegetable prices, particularly those of onions, spiked after unseasonal rain damaged crops. India's food inflation rate has slightly eased since then, but...

Five years is a short period but the achievements are awesome. About ten crore poorest of India’s poor have opened personal accounts in banks or post offices; people demand work because it is their right; it has already regenerated ponds and water bodies and other community assets in thousands of villages; men and women get equal wages for equal work and ordinary people have a right to audit development works...

Four-pronged approach to understand compliance issues from taxpayers' perspective Challenge is to develop focussed programmes to reduce compliance costs Seeking to tackle the issue of black money in a proactive manner, the Finance Ministry has set up a “study group” to improve voluntary compliance and address the issue of revenue leakage by suggesting appropriate measures to motivate tax evaders to disclose their unaccounted income. The decision comes in the backdrop of Finance Minister...

‘Declaration of assets by NDA Ministers on Nitish Kumar's direction not enough' Dissident JD(U) leader to explain the source of his assets on February 2 Rebel Janata Dal (United) Rajya Sabha MP Upendra Prasad Kushwaha on Sunday asked the Ministers in Bihar's National Democratic Alliance government to explain the source of their assets. “The Ministers in the NDA government should try to come clean on their properties and assets by explaining the source,”...