-The Hindu ‘Competitive bidding would favour private players, give rise to monopolies’ Even as the controversy over the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s (CAG) report on coal blocks allocation that reportedly caused a loss of Rs. 1.86 lakh crore to the national exchequer rages, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has said coal allocations and mining, in future, should be done through the public sector. In an article in party organ People’s Democracy, party general...

-The Hindu The Cabinet decision to seek total prohibition of child labour is a step long overdue The Cabinet Committee has passed the proposal seeking a total ban on employing children under 14 years and of 14-18 year olds in hazardous occupations. When passed in Parliament as law, it will be a huge milestone in the journey that many of us had started in the mid-1980s. This also marks a milestone in...

-The Economic Times The elderly will find it hard to buy health insurance with the public sector insurers bringing down agent commissions by more than a third for policies sold to those over 55. Companies with high claims, too, will find it difficult to get agents to service them as group policies where claims exceed premium will not be eligible for commission. The new commission structure that is effective from this month...

-The Business Standard An industry capable of bringing down governments has chosen to keep quiet about the creeping corruption in its own backyard You can pay newspapers to get any kind of article published, ditto for news channels. You can fix TV ratings or readership numbers. You can even fix the box-office figures for your film. And if nothing works, you can always entice a media buyer with a cutback to...

-The Times of India The Comptroller and Auditor General is likely to make a strong pitch for scrapping all the controversial allocations of coal mines during its presentation to Parliament's Public Accounts Committee. Sources said the auditor looks set to cite total lack of transparency in the recommendations made by the screening committee for allocation of coal blocks worth thousands of crores. In its presentation to the PAC likely next week, the...