-PTI Issues concerning the regulation and development of real estate were discussed today by the government with various stakeholders including representatives of state governments, industry associations, consumer welfare groups, and technical and legal experts.  The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, headed by Kumari Selja, held consultations here with stakeholders on Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, 2011 on which the government had invited suggestions from the public a few months...

-The Indian Express   Even as the UPA’s effort to introduce 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail fell on its face, the proposal to allow 100 per cent FDI in single-brand retail is through. Just before the finance minister goes to the US to speak to investors, this decision is something of a face saver. The department of industrial policy and promotion formally announced the decision, with the condition that in...

-The Telegraph   There is no jargon in Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi’s brand of economics — there are only blankets and bicycles and other such mundane things that he feels the poor need. And he even got a nod from a man who has received the Nobel Prize for economics. Speaking at a discussion, flanked by Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, an economics Nobel laureate and Lord Meghnad Desai, professor emeritus at the London School...

Interventions aimed directly at children — providing free textbooks, uniforms and addressing out of school children – account only for 6 per cent of the total Investment in elementary education. The largest Investment — 78 per cent — of the education budget in India is invested in teachers and management costs while the next largest spending, to the tune of 14 per cent, is done on creating school infrastructure. Only...

India must not obsess with how fast its economy is growing and instead pay more attention to its human development indicators which are worse than even that of Bangladesh, Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen said. Sen, known among his peers as the Conscience of Economics, said slower growth is not a good enough reason for national gloom. If India really must feel upset, it should be because the country is...