Tihar jail today has the largest collection of charged or convicted top officials, a powerful ex-minister, sundry politicians and officials. Maharashtra had a teflon-coated chief minister who was ‘sacked’ to a cabinet post in Delhi after being long untouched by many scandals. Another just exited. A former Jharkhand chief minister is in jail on charges of looting his state treasury and accumulating funds abroad. The powerful founder of the Nationalist...

The government plans to hike diesel prices by up to Rs 3 a litre soon after the assembly elections in five states are over next week, while an equivalent steep increase in petrol rates is also on card. "An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is scheduled to meet on May 11 to mull on a hike in diesel prices," a top government official, refusing to...

Sober Reflection     * Invoking a clause in the Panchayati Raj Act, panchayats in Punjab are going dry     * The resolutions have to be adopted by two-thirds majority at panchayat meetings     * The excise department has had to shut down 32 liquor vends and relocate 15 of them     * Liquor consumption is high in Punjab: per capita consumption is 12 bottles a year *** It's the state that gave the nation the Patiala...

By all indications, FDI in multi-brand retail is a fait accompli. Or so we have been told time and again by everyone, the PM downward. The “question is at what point of time it should be done”. This remark from Pranab Mukherjee in a post-budget TV interview may have revealed that the debate has moved beyond whether to permit FDI in multi-brand retailing—the lifeline of small- and medium-sized neighbourhood stores....

India's finance minister announced on Monday a food security bill for 2011/12, a measure that would provide cheap grains for millions of India's poor but which has sparked worries of a huge fiscal cost. It was one of the first signs of populism in the annual budget as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confronted high prices and corruption scandals as well as elections in five states this year. In his ongoing budget speech,...