-The Economic Times Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken charge of the UPA's initiatives to directly transfer welfare benefits and subsidies into individual beneficiaries' bank accounts - a system that would plug the rampant leakages of funds earmarked for the poor via schemes such as NREGA on which the government spends over 3,00,000 crore annually. A new ministerial co-ordination committee under the PM would now fast-track the architecture for cash transfers while...

-The Economic Times Ahead of the first meeting of the Group of Ministers on the land bill, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has asserted that the proposed land bill balances the needs of economic growth with concerns of the common man. In a note for the meeting scheduled for Thursday, Ramesh has argued that the existing Land Acquisition Act, 1894 shows little regard for those whose land is acquired. The note draws...

-The Economic Times When the country was growing at more than 8 per cent for about a decade, services and manufacturing were the darlings of policy-makers, investors and talking heads. Agriculture, a segment that employs nearly half the hundred crore population of the country, was hardly mentioned even in passing. This year, thanks to a poor monsoon, suddenly the farmers are the centre of India's growth story, or the lack of...

-PTI After the big-bang reforms, Law Minister Salman Khurshid today indicated government's keenness to push bills on food security and land acquisition, insisting that even Mamata Banerjee will not be able to oppose them. He maintained that "the bills drive a deft political balance between populism and reforms". "The draft (food security) Bill is being given the final touches by the Cabinet. This will ensure that poor will have their stomachs full. Nobody...

-The Hindu Building ‘capitalism with Indian characteristics’ means decisions cannot ignore concerns of voters and communities As the economy slows down and the rupee wilts, Manmohan Singh has bitten the ‘reforms’ bullet with both eyes on the credit rating agencies whose negative reports have done much to dampen the ‘animal spirits’ of investors, foreign and native. Last November, when the Congress party made a push to introduce foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail,...