-Tehelka Edited Excerpts From An Interview NOTED ECONOMIST and Columbia University Professor Jagdish Bhagwati’s pro-free trade stance is well-known. A friend of the prime minister and his batch mate from Cambridge University, Professor Bhagwati feels the UPA’s departure from the stagnation of the past few years is a welcome change, and lauds the decision to allow FDI in multi-brand retail. In an interview to TEHELKA Business Editor Shaili Chopra, Bhagwati says more...

-The Times of India The cry for speedy justice is going to be shriller in the next three decades as a conservative judicial estimate predicts that case pendency is going to register a five-fold increase to touch 15 crore but the judge strength will go up only four times to settle at 75,000. At present, nearly 19,000 judges, including 18,000 in trial courts, are dealing with a pendency of 3 crore cases,...

-The Economic Times India's consumer prices climbed 10.56 per cent in December from a year earlier. This will hold the RBI's rate-cutting hand and prove politically painful for the government. The increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), over three percentage points more than the increase in the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) number, is due to a spurt in prices in the food and beverage category - mainly vegetables, oils and fat,...

The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...

-The Hindu When a political party puts up candidates with criminal charges, it results in the alienation of large sections of people from the political class and politics itself When the Election Commission of India turned 60 on January 25, 2010, The Hindu opened its lead editorial of January 29 with the words, “After overseeing 15 General Elections to the Lok Sabha, the ECI, in its diamond jubilee year, can with justifiable...