-The Hindustan Times In his Independence Day address, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the rupee is down because of the global economic crisis. A look at the events of the last decade reveals otherwise. When the global economy was doing well between 2002 and 2008, the rupee was stable at about Rs. 45 to a dollar. When the global crisis erupted in 2008 and continued until 2012, the rupee held stable...
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Fleeing the light -Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey
-The Hindu Political parties have acted as judge, jury, supplicant and advocate in their move to amend the RTI Act and exempt themselves from its purview. Their rhetoric on transparency is more hollow than ever A friend called the other day, and said: "I want to congratulate all of you in the RTI community, because you have managed to do what no one, and nothing else has managed to for a long...
More »Centre Refuses to Release NRHM Funds to Uttar Pradesh
-Outlook Various programmes under the National Rural Health Mission are likely to be affected in Uttar Pradesh as the Centre has refused to release funds to the state for 2013-14, citing non-fulfillment of certain conditions. According to Union Healthy Ministry officials, the state could not claim its share of funds last year also. The Ministry has refused to release Rs 2,763.43 crore, allocated to UP under the scheme, citing non-fulfillment of...
More »Finances are already open, says Left-Aarti Dhar
-The Hindu The Left parties have always maintained that the financial statements and accounts of a political party should be made publicly available, and hence strongly rejected the order of the Central Information Commission (CIC) that sought to bring six national parties under the purview of the Right to Information Act, 2005. Disputing the CIC's argument that parties were public authorities, Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist),...
More »Food Security Bill on shaky turf -KP Prabhakaran Nair
-The New Indian Express In 1948 when the United Nations passed the covenant ensuring the right to food, vis-à-vis the right to proper livelihood, to which India became a signatory, it did not envisage that the whole issue would be caught up in such an imbroglio - political and economic - as one witnesses today. The original covenant in article 25 ensures the "right to work and livelihood" and right to...
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