-The Hindu Less than 3 per cent of Indians pay income tax and a significant proportion under-reports taxable income. On December 28, 2015, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas announced the exclusion of high-income households from the LPG subsidy cover. As per the official press release, subsidy would not be available for domestic LPG consumers, if the consumer or his/her spouse had taxable income of more than Rs. 10 lakh for...

-The Hindu Business Line Land should not be viewed as the only factor of productivity. And, managing food prices calls for better market intelligence The Centre’s emphasis on manufacturing, manifested in initiatives such as ‘Make in India’ and ‘Skill India’ have a downside: relative indifference to agriculture. Some of this is already visible in terms of rural distress and food price inflation. This can prove costly to the economy, reminiscent of the...

-The Hindu Business Line India is being too accommodating of MNCs The Centre is needlessly apologetic about our IPR laws. It set up an IPR ‘think tank’ in October 2014, perhaps responding to a view that our IPRs are not strong enough to invite foreign investment. Last January, Prime Minister Modi and President Obama issued a joint statement which “committed to establish an annual high-level Intellectual Property Working Group”. In November, Modi...

-The Hindu Business Line The mythology of free trade being a force for economic progress remains entrenched in world politics Globalisation has created a unique spectator sport, where political dignitaries periodically gather at carefully chosen venues for days of deliberation over humanity’s most consequential problems. It is a spectacle at which ‘civil society’ — as the new force in world politics is called — is granted a tent of its own, financed...

-Frontline The NCRB data used to justify the new law bringing down the age of responsibility for criminal action are open to interpretation. Often the same data can be interpreted in different ways to arrive at contrary conclusions. Portions of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data have been quoted ad nauseam by the government and the media alike to justify the changes made in the juvenile justice law. Experts from the...