-Livemint.com * Privatizing more PSUs is once again the flavour of the season. But data reveals govt is ignoring some hard truths * There are only a handful of sectors where a disproportionate market share and the nature of business gives government FIRms a case to command a premium About 10 days after the central government iterated on the floor of Parliament its resolve to privatize businesses owned by it on a scale...
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Privacy vs curbs: Rules reflect global trend but sweeping blacklist puts law and order at centre -Pranav Mukul and Aashish Aryan
-The Indian Express These rules come even as a Joint Parliamentary Committee is in the final stages of discussion of a privacy Bill that covers aspects such as the role of social media intermediaries and the reach of Big Tech companies, and the privacy accorded to the users on such platforms. The notification of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the Government’s FIRst move to regulate...
More »Centre’s IT Rules bring answerability in digital ecosystem. But they also increase political control -Apar Gupta
-The Indian Express Apar Gupta writes: The substance of many of the requirements were never put to public consultation or deliberation by experts. This is particularly the case for the regulations for online news portals and video streaming platforms. In the polarised environment that we now inhabit, there are few public agreements. One of these rare instances is an agreement that social media is broken. For many commentators, this is an area...
More »Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index falls short of nudging govts to undertake reforms -Mallika Mahajan and Pawan Kumar Sinha
-The Indian Express The Corruption Perception Index generates short-lived hype/hysteria but rarely prompts a Pygmalion effect. Measurement of corruption has remained a perennial problem. Transparency International’s (TI) FIRst Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released in 1995 was a bold initiative. Until then, corruption was a taboo topic. International financial institutions regarded corruption as an internal policy matter of the respective countries. Does the CPI nudge governments to initiate anti-corruption reforms, referred to as...
More »GDP growth is being driven by larger FIRms. Smaller ones continue to suffer, need policy attention -Saugata Bhattacharya
-The Indian Express Policy coordination between the Centre and states will be crucial for implementing this ambitious reform agenda. The National Statistical Office will release the second advance GDP estimates for 2020-21 at the end of February. The FIRst advance estimate had, in early January, forecasted a contraction of 7.7 per cent in 2020-21. This was due largely to an expected, sharp contraction in both industry and services. The second advance estimates...
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