-The Business Standard Government taking steps to offer cooking gas to all rural households  India plans to provide affordable electricity to all households in the next five years, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said today. "The Government of India aims to provide 24x7 electricity to all households in the country and affordable access to electricity in the next 5 years," he said inaugurating an International Seminar on Energy Access organised by the Ministry of...

-The Business Standard Consumers should be free to choose their power distributor  Anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal’s recent campaign against power tariff increases by distribution companies in Delhi raises many valid issues, but the manner in which he has chosen to register his protests is unlikely to further that cause beyond a point. Instead, the campaign is likely to get embroiled in avoidable controversies, leading even to its derailment. In the first round...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-NDTV A letter written by BJP president Nitin Gadkari lobbying for contractors building a mega-dam project in Maharashtra has the Congress demanding his resignation, and the BJP on the defensive. Written on July 30 to Water Resources Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, Mr Gadkari asks for Rs. 400 crores to be released to the contractors hired for the Gosikhurd dam in Vidarbha. The main contractor is Ajay Sancheti, a BJP member of the...

-Outlook The death of 39 rhinos in and around the world-famous Kaziranga National Park in less than 10 months has brought to the fore the threat faced by the endangered animal. The threat comes from poachers, who kill the rare one-horned rhinoceros for its prized horn whose price in the international market varies from Rs 40 lakh to Rs 90 lakh, and flood which is an annual occurrence in Assam. Early last month,...