-Economic and Political Weekly The Saradha group's collapse has possibly bankrupted lakhs of small investors robbing them of their life svaings, and has rendered thousands of its agents jobless. The scam highlights the failure of the government and its regulatory agencies to reign in the mushrooming chit fund companies in West Bengal. It also brings under the scanner the Trinamool Congress' proximity with the tainted group. In the wake of the...

-The Hindustan Times The Central Bureau of Investigation said on Friday that the law minister had been given access to a draft copy of its report into the coal blocks allocation scam, prompting furious Opposition calls for his resignation and putting at risk the functioning of Parliament next week. CBI director Ranjit Sinha submitted a highly unusual affidavit to the Supreme Court saying the agency had shared the draft with minister Ashwani...

-The Times of India Parliament's standing committee on Coal and Steel has indicted the government for "totally abusing its powers" in allotting coal mines between 1993 and 2010 through the "most non-transparent procedure" to "few fortunate ones for their own benefit". "The government cannot give largesse on its arbitrary discretion or its sweet will," the committee, under the chairmanship of Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee, said in its latest report tabled in...

-The Times of India The broad consensus finally reached by major political parties on the land acquisition Bill is a major breakthrough. The Bill, if passed, will bring transparency to the land acquisition process, help clear investor uncertainty and hopefully improve the supply of land for development. The break in the stalemate was made possible by a flexible approach of the government, which incorporated proposals of opposition parties. This is a...

-The Telegraph The "Bonzi" edifice, Bengal's version of the fraudulent Ponzi scheme that conned US investors a century ago, is shaking at its foundations. The panic set off by Saradha defaulting on payments has spread to similar schemes run by other firms and triggered protests and attacks on company offices in several parts of the state. These schemes' mostly small-time rural investors have begun to panic about the safety of their hard-earned...