-PTI Describing the current economic situation as a difficult one, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday hinted at tough decisions like hike in energy prices and reduction of subsidies to achieve the growth target of 8 per cent in the 12th Five Year Plan. Inaugurating the National Development Council (NDC) meeting, Dr. Singh cautioned that “business as usual” policies will not be sufficient to achieve the scaled down growth target of 8...

-Frontline The Congress-led UPA seems to be betting heavily on the cash transfer scheme as a means to return to power in the next general elections. DECEMBER 2012 may go down in history as the month when the Congress party created its own “India Shining” moment: the moment when it started believing its own hype, and even deluded itself into thinking that its perception was so widely shared that it could provide...

-Frontline The Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill is an attempt to circumvent the hurdles before acquisition, such as rehabilitation of land losers, without much increasing the cost of land. THE preamble to the draft Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation (LARR) Bill is very noble; it talks about a “humane, informed, consultative and transparent process for land acquisition for industrialisation, development of essential infrastructural facilities and urbanisation with the least disturbance...

-The Economic Times Martha C Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She has written extensively about religious minorities and their predicament across the world. While her latest book, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age, focuses on the treatment of religious minorities, especially Muslims, in the western world, she has written about the meticulous targeting...

-The Business Standard Since cities have little money to cover operational costs of running buses, they do not invest in new buses or modern infra Liquor baron Ponty Chadha and his brother – both died recently in a fratricide – had another business that is not widely known. They had acquired the concession to run public transport buses in Delhi — three clusters with a combined fleet of 600-odd vehicles. Even before...