-The Business Standard The Odisha government expects to send the comprehensive document for the 12th Plan (2012-17) to the Centre by the end of June this year. Ahead of submission of the document to the Centre, the department of planning & coordination has urged all administrative departments to submit their respective reports for compilation of the 12th Plan, listing their priorities and thrust areas, by May 31. “We will be submitting the 12th...

-The Economic Times The per capita income may have gone up by 14% during the last financial year, but the debt burden on every Indian - in the form of the government's debt - went up by 23%, latest official estimates show. According to finance ministry data, the per capita debt in India was estimated at nearly Rs 33,000 at the end of March 2012, compared to a little over Rs 26,600...

-The Economic Times Open-ended consumption subsidies on petroleum products have wrought havoc on government finances. Reportedly, the trio of public sector oil marketing companies have of late blocked some 3.8 million parallel household connections of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), in a bid to rationalise the subsidy outgo. The move to weed out multiple LPG connections does make sense. But we need to keep the big picture in mind and overhaul the pricing and...

Cabinet clears change in divorce law: Women to get part of husband’s property In a move that could be a setback to land acquisition for commercial use, a parliamentary committee unanimously recommended that the government should not acquire land for industrial, commercial or for-profit enterprises or private companies. Instead, the panel, which has proposed legislation favouring landowners, recommends that private companies and public-private partnerships would have to buy land in the open...

A parliamentary panel has cited the practice in developed countries to reject a key provision in the land acquisition bill allowing the government to acquire plots for private companies. The committee said in the US, Japan and Canada, land is purchased by private enterprises, not acquired by the state. Why should India continue this “anomalous practice”, asked the parliamentary standing committee on rural development in its report on the Land Acquisition,...