-The Indian Express The UPA has long been planning a shift to direct cash transfers for poor households, with a view to replacing the 3.23 lakh crore worth of unwieldy subsidies currently in place. Last year, the then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had spoken of the famously inefficient food and fertiliser subsidies, and of a comprehensive overhaul through cash transfers. Now, that plan has been fleshed out further. The prime minister...

-The Indian Express One of the three formulae used by the Comptroller and Auditor General to calculate the loss to the government for selling 2G spectrum on a first-come-first-served basis was suggested by BJP leader and Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Murli Manohar Joshi. When the team conducting the audit said they “are not on strong ground” in basing the loss on the formula suggested, they were told by CAG headquarters...

-The Telegraph The Union cabinet today approved a controversial drug pricing policy that had been opposed by the health ministry, the finance ministry and public health policy experts who fear it will legitimise high prices of medicines. A government source said the cabinet has cleared the drug pricing policy that health experts suspect will determine caps on prices of 348 drugs through a formula based on market prices of drugs rather than...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: A cash-strapped Uttar Pradesh government wrote off loans worth Rs 1,650 crore to farmers on Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's 74th birthday on Thursday, fulfilling an election promise that is bound to further deplete the state's already dwindling coffers. Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said 7.2 lakh farmers, who've taken loans of up to Rs 50,000 from rural cooperative banks, will benefit from the waiver. "Farmers who've...

-The Economic Times The appointment of the third education commission headed by leading sociologist Andre Beiteille to undertake a major policy review appears to be held up after the Prime Minister's Office raised concerns over including a naturalised US citizen as a member. The human resource development ministry had named Pranab Bardhan, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, as a member of the commission. Bardhan is a...