-The Hindu Business Line ‘Centre has presented 5 full-fledged Budgets, does not have the legitimacy for a sixth’ The Congress alleged on Thursday that the Centre is planning to present a full-fledged Budget violating all Parliamentary conventions, procedures and traditions. It maintained that the Narendra Modi government neither has the “electoral mandate” nor the “electoral legitimacy” to present six full Budgets in five years. Talking to reporters, former minister and senior Congress spokesperson...

-The Hindu Sluggish health spending can be reversed with a substantial increase in the allocation for health in the Union Budget India’s neighbours, in the past two decades, have made great strides on the development front. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan now have better health indicators than India, which has puzzled many. How could these countries make the great escape from the diseases of poverty earlier than their much bigger neighbour? India’s...

-The Hindu Petitioners asked to file response New Delhi: The government on Tuesday handed over a status report to the Supreme Court on the progress in the process of appointment to the Central Information Commission (CIC) even as PIL petitioners alleged that the procedure followed was arbitrary. A three-judge Bench, led by Justice A.K. Sikri, took the status report on record and ordered that a copy be handed over to RTI activists-petitioners Anjali...

-The Hindu Tackling drought must be the immediate priority for administrators across the country The coming elections to the Lok Sabha, crucial to the future of our democracy, our pluralism, our federalism, are only a few weeks away. But something else, something urgent, something is already upon us. And something that is going to coincide with the elections. A drought. The rains have failed us. Nothing new, one might say. True, except that the...

-The Hindu Business Line If regulation turns supportive and the RBI mandates banks to lend against the electronic negotiable warehouse receipts (eNWRs), they may soon take off Two weeks ago, I was in Suryapet district of Telangana. Here’s a short story of an English-speaking farmer from there, who greeted me with “good afternoon’ as I wished “namaskaram”. Venkateshwara Rao hails from Chinna Nemila village in Maddirala tehsil. He has a five-acre land on...