-The Telegraph   New laws are often brought in without assessing their judicial and financial impact. The result is poor implementation, says Seetha Call it collateral damage. According to newspaper reports, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has written to the Prime Minister asking for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to be put on hold during the peak season of agricultural operations. With a guaranteed income of Rs 100 a day for at...

How deluded we are when we think that when an important piece of legislation is introduced, policymakers carefully scrutinise it for some room for improvement. Indian democracy is good at passing progressive-sounding legislation that becomes unpopular later for poor implementation and a consequent feeling of letdown and therefore resentment. Often the problems of poor implementation that surface later stem from small mistakes in design that could have been corrected at...

-IANS   Concerned over the poor 11 percent fund utilisation of the Rahul Gandhi-driven Bundelkhand package worth Rs.7,000 crore, the central government will review its performance Monday.   Following Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi's intervention, the central government had sanctioned Rs.7,000 crore package two years ago for development of the backward Bundelkhand region, spread across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.   Even as politics hots up in the run up to the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections...

-The Business Standard   Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee explained the government’s helplessness over inflation in the Rajya Sabha with great eloquence on Thursday. Much of what he said may have solid economic fundamentals, but the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government cannot claim helplessness forever — not when the signs of the cracks it is creating in India’s rural prosperity are becoming so obvious. If any one thing that has protected the Indian...

The pitched Centre-state spat overNational Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme(NREGS) is likely to reach its breaking pointsoon. On Friday, Sanjay Dixit, a member of Central Employment Guarantee Council, slammed thestate government for not pulling up senior state government officials for improper implementation of the scheme. Speaking to TOI, Dixit confirmed that the Centrewill, in the next one month, stop fund flow to at least 14 districts of UP, because of large scale misappropriation...