Advocates of liberalisation argue that by reducing state intervention and increasing transparency economic reform reduces corruption. Recent allegations of corruption suggest that this may not be true. In a season for scandal, allegations of large scale corruption have captured political India's attention. The instances to which such allegations relate are many, varying from the sale of 2G spectrum and the mobilisation and/or disposal of land and mining resources to purchases made...

Wants States to have power to ban pesticides Forest Minister Benoy Viswom has said Kerala was of the considered opinion that the Centre should take a relook at the Pesticide Management Bill of 2008. In a letter to Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh on Saturday, he said that Kerala, upon studying the draft of the Bill, had found it not addressing the core issues of pesticide misuse,...

The government on Friday hinted at the possibility of the media-lobbyist nexus being examined by either the ethics or privileges committee of Parliament. Senior sources dropped broad hints that either of the two committees could go into the whole gamut of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia's telephonic conversations with media personalities. This was the first government response to the Opposition's demand that the media's role in corporate lobbying come under the JPC scrutiny....

It is quite likely that a few weeks from now someone will be knocking at your doors and asking for your fingerprints. If you agree, your fingerprints will enter a national database, along with personal characteristics (age, sex, occupation, and so on) that have already been collected from you, unless you were missed in the “Census household listing” earlier this year. The purpose of this exercise is to build the National...

The two day 43rd Session of the Indian Labour Conference (ILC), the apex national tripartite body that discusses key issues affecting labour and employment and provides policy perspectives and recommendations, concluded in New Delhi today. The Conference was inaugurated by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Tuesday 23rd November 2010. Senior level representatives of the three pillars of the tripartism, Trade Unions, Employers’ Associations and Government, participated in the deliberations...