-The Economic Times While there are ripples in political circles over the estimated black money stashed by Indians in tax havens abroad - as quoted by the Central Bureau of Investigation chief Amar Pratap Singh on Monday - sources say that the agency has arrived at the figure following cross-checking several sources, reports and a rough estimation.  "Most of the illegal money abroad forms part of tax evasion by individuals and companies,"...

-The Business Standard   Having enrolled 200 million Indian citizens for Aadhaar, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is now taking the initial steps to the services route. UIDAI chairperson Nandan Nilekani said that they have started two pilots that will allow the oil industry to bring in transparency in LPG transfer and the use of Aadhaar for getting mobile connectivity. UIDAI is running a pilot in Mysore using the Aadhaar platform for...

How economically sustainable is food subsidy? The cost could even be double of what the government estimates Food deprivation and malnutrition are completely unacceptable and everything has to be done to eliminate such an evil. The prevalence of malnutrition in a country like India is in itself a cause for serious concern since malnourished children may jeopardise India’s favourable demographic dividend (as per independent estimates, close to 60 per cent of...

-The Indian Express CBI director Amar Pratap Singh declared today that “if the king is immoral, so will be his subjects”, and sought “ethics in governance” while addressing an Interpol anti-corruption programme. In a hint at scams involving ministers, Singh said: “I am prompted to recall a famous verse from ancient Indian scriptures, which says ‘Yatha raja tatha praja’.” Singh said $ 500 billion (nearly Rs 24 lakh crore) had been stashed away...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...