-The Indian Express While the BJP and the Left have been objecting to allowing FDI in retail, ally DMK’s stand could spell trouble for the government. However, there’s some relief in sight with Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee hinting that she is open to discussions on the issue. A few hours before the Union Cabinet cleared FDI in retail, Banerjee indicated that her party was open to discussions on the matter, without...

-The Times of India   The debate about Planning Commission's controversial poverty line could finally be buried. The UPA is now mulling doing away with the BPL-APL divide and providingsubsidized grains to all except those who get automatically excluded in the ongoing socio-economic caste census. But on the flipside, it also wants to reduce the entitlement from the proposed 35 kg to 25 kg instead for the poor.  Along with the move to...

Finance secretary R S Gujral on Tuesday said the income tax department has started prosecution proceedings against all those found guilty of stashing black money abroad, including the Indians found having accounts in HSBC, Geneva.  Gujral said it was an entirely wrong notion that people found accused in black money cases would be left without prosecution. "We have started prosecution process and we are bound by no agreement not to do...

Two senior ministers are at loggerheads over filing of an appeal against a court order that compels the Centre to pay minimum wages to the MGNREGA workers. Apart from re-igniting the debate over statutory minimum wages and centrally decided price, the order forces the central government to pay about Rs 4,000 crore to workers under the rural job plan as arrears and R1,000 crore every year. According to sources, in a...

UPA’s much-publicised scheme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), is not creating labour shortage for agriculture and dairy production alone, but the textile and handloom sectors are also facing the heat on this count. A Working Group report on textile and handloom sectors has noted that the scheme was drawing skilled weavers to ‘unskilled’ MGNREGA. It says that high-end weavers are sticking to the profession, but low-end weavers are...