-The Telegraph The National Democratic Alliance government is planning to scrap the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, had already asked for the employment programme of the MGNREGA under which the state was obliged to provide employment on demand (failing which an unemployment allowance of a specified amount had to be paid), to be downgraded to a mere "food-for-work" programme, where the state...

-India Today New Delhi: The Food and Supply department has taken the social media route for encouraging Delhiites to expose loopholes, including pilferage, through sting operations in the public distribution system. Prior to this measure, the department had launched two toll-free numbers - 1967 and 1800-11-0841 - for the people to lodge their grievances. A call centre has also been functioning for taking up PDS related complaints. The call centre functions from...

-The Business Standard The NDA is looking to reduce fiscal deficit not by chopping social sector spending but by paring it down Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is fairly confident the government will meet this year's fiscal deficit target. At 4.1 per cent of gross domestic product the deficit looked looked like a bit of stretch in July but the food subsidy, for one, is not going to balloon as in previous years. The...

-TheGoan.net As had been anticipated, on October 18, the Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to decontrol the prices of diesel, the most widely-used petroleum product in the country. Riding on an unexpected fall in world prices of crude oil, the government was able to simultaneously announce a sharp fall in consumer prices of diesel by Rs 3.37 per litre (in Delhi). But the decision...

-The Business Standard   NC Saxena, a former member of the National Advisory Council believes that the regulatory regime in the states continues to be oppressive. In an e-mailed interview with Aditi Phadnis, Saxena says that the fundamental problem in India is the low tax-GDP ratio and neither the last government nor the current one seems interested in increasing revenues. Edited excerpts: * The new government appears to be watering down a lot...