-The Hindu Business Line India's vehicles should incorporate safety features that are the norm elsewhere The tremendous increase in the number of vehicles on Indian roads has also led to an increase in road accidents. India accounts for 10 per cent of the global road crash fatalities. Statistics shows that globally more than a million people die due to road accidents every year; if we do not do anything about it by...

-The Indian Express In his speech, PM Modi said that opening bank accounts is a step towards joining economic mainstream. Launching his government's first big ticket social welfare programme, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday gave a call for eradicating what he termed as "financial untouchability" of the poor by opening at least one bank account for every family in the country in less than...

-The Goan In the second decade of the 15th century, after the French ruler Charles VI was succeeded by his son bearing his name, a phrase was coined: "The king is dead, long live the king". The phrase literally meant that the transfer of sovereignty occurs simultaneously from the moment of death of an earlier monarch. Over the years, the phrase came to signify superficial change: the more things change,...

-The Business Standard The Planning Commission needs to be replaced by institutions prescribed under the Constitution for the functions it usurped The Planning Commission was a powerful centre of extra-constitutional authority, but not because the Constitution overlooked the need for the roles that it played. The prescription of fiscal flows from Centre to states was assigned under Article 280 to Finance Commissions, set up every five years with what by convention...

-The Business Standard The new institution could play the role of a 'think tank' A high-level meeting to frame a new body to replace the Planning Commission is learnt to have arrived at a broad consensus that allocation of Plan funds should not be the domain of the new entity but of the finance ministry. The new institution, it was agreed, could play the role of a "think tank". Officials in the...