-The Hindu Surely something is amiss when ideologically diverse political parties reach a consensus on anything in quick time. Without even waiting to legally challenge the order of the Central Information Commission bringing parties under the ambit of the Right to Information Act, the Union Cabinet has decided to amend the Act to nullify the effect of the order. Political parties will have to accept the fact that they are...

-IndiaResists.com The ongoing debate between two stalwart economists, Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati, must be joined by those who understand contemporary realities and challenges in terms altogether different from those of mainstream economists. In a recent (July 27) article in Times of India, Bhagwati's co-author Arvind Panagariya characterizes the differences between the two in the following terms. Sen favours education and health measures as being the first steps to tackle poverty...

-The Hindu The UPA seems to have forgotten that the country's trade commitments, including to the WTO, stand in the way of its implementing the Food Security Ordinance The last time I began an essay with the words "in this era of globalisation," in high school, even my teacher winced at the cliché. In junking the phrase, however, we may have forgotten its import too. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) certainly seems...

-The Hindu Despite its many flaws, the food security bill is an opportunity to end the leakages from the PDS and prevent wastage of public resources The National Food Security Bill, now an ordinance, has been a target of sustained attacks in the business media in recent weeks. There is nothing wrong, of course, in being critical of the bill, or even opposed to it. Indeed, the bill has many flaws. What...

-The Hindu Bangalore: Large-scale irregularities - running to over Rs. 650 crore - has been detected in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) across the State in the last five years in an audit conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The audit report states that the possibility of FRAud cannot be ruled out, as about 63.80 lakh individuals identified as ineligible for employment were...