-Business Standard FCRA amendment raises questions about ethical governance The little-noticed announcement in the Finance Bill to retrospectively amend a clause in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) does little to enhance the government's reputation for ethical governance. The amendment, to apply from 2010, will mean that donations to political parties by Indian companies with foreign direct investment within mandated sectoral limits will no longer be considered "foreign contributions". The FCRA bans...

-Business Standard Centre needs to have dialogue with the Opposition instead of letting politics come in the way; it needs to stoop to conquer Will the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government now use the Money Bills route to get Parliament — more to the point the Rajya Sabha where it does not have a majority — to clear legislation? The fact is, getting all Bills to be classified as Money Bills to circumvent...

-The Indian Express The process of return of the bill saw an animated debate over why it was brought as a money bill. Since it was a money Bill, it could not be rejected or amended by Rajya Sabha Hours after the Opposition, making most of the NDA’s lack of numbers in Rajya Sabha, pushed through five amendments and returned the Aadhaar Bill to Lok Sabha, the Lower House rejected the changes...

-The Hindu The question of whether or not the Aadhaar bill is a money bill continues to vex Parliament, with the Rajya Sabha’s Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting ending inconclusively after the Opposition demanded specific clauses of Article 110(1) of the Constitution that defines a Money Bill to be part of Speaker Sumitra Mahajan’s certification of it as such. Government sources, however, said they were determined to place the Bill as...

-The Hindu Business Line Ten years on, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act endures because it provides the poor a political voice February 2016 marks a decade since India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) came into force. NREGA is both revolutionary and modest; it promises every rural household one hundred days of employment annually on public-works projects, but the labour is taxing and pays minimum wage, at best. Many charges have...