-The Economic Times   On Saturday, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee told New Delhi that it had 15 days to announce a debt-relief package for the state. She did not specify what would happen after the deadline, but said that her patience was wearing thin.  The Centre cannot give in to such blackmail. Banerjee doesn't have to bother about the huge risk that this demand creates. The Centre has few powers to write...

-The Indian Express   Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today announced Rs 1,00,000 crore increase in the agriculture credit target to Rs 5,75,000 for the next fiscal and raised the outlay for farm sector by about Rs 3,000 crore. "Agriculture continues to be a priority to the government. The total plan outlay for agriculture and cooperation has been increased by 18 per cent from Rs 17,123 crore in 2011-12 to Rs 20,208 crore in...

A tectonic shift in the global climate negotiations got underway with the African group of countries siding with India in demanding that equity and 'common but differentiated responsibilities' be embedded in the talks for a future climate regime. The re-alignments became evident with several key groups of nations submitting their views on how countries should increase their ambition levels for cutting emissions in the coming years. The submissions from Association of Small...

Renewable energy sources are attractive but in a sense, powerless. Maybe, someday we'll all live in houses with photovoltaic roof tiles but in the real world, a 1GW of solar plant will require 60 square miles of solar panels. When the demand increases, you can fire up more coal, but how will you cause the wind to blow and the sun to shine 24x7? The earth is already so disabled...

-The Economist   Nuclear power will not go away, but its role may never be more than marginal, says Oliver Morton THE LIGHTS ARE not going off all over Japan, but the nuclear power plants are. Of the 54 reactors in those plants, with a combined capacity of 47.5 gigawatts (GW, a thousand megawatts), only two are operating today. A good dozen are unlikely ever to reopen: six at Fukushima Dai-ichi, which suffered...