Ranchi: It was a budget aimed at sweetening the bitter price rise PILl. From cutting down VAT on diesel, sweets and ice- cream to making foodgrains available at Re 1 per kg for the poor, deputy chief minister Raghubar Das today presented an annual budget which focused on rural development, food security and social welfare. Chanting the “inclusive growth” mantra, Das, the BJP face in the Shibu Soren government, showed...

Technology is helping public sector banks find customers in rural India. This is part of the Centre’s efforts to include villages in the organized financial system; to ensure they are not cheated of their wages. PILots show promise   The current state of rural banking in the country is poor. A recent report, by the National Sample Survey Organization, revealed that 51.4 per cent of the 89.3 million total farmer households in...

Morning-after PILls should be back on air. And not just private companies but even the Union health ministry should advertise them. This is the view of a four-member expert committee set up by the Drug Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) recently to assess the pros and cons of allowing advertising of emergency PILls. The Drug Controller General's office banned advertising of all emergency contraceptives like Unwanted-72 and I-PILl on January 11,...

Hundreds of polluting industrial units in Delhi are set to close shop as the Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought strict compliance of the Supreme Court ruling on closure of such units in the M C Mehta case. The move would start with polluting units in Nangloi village, and the High Court gave the Delhi government four weeks for the clean-up act. A Division Bench of acting Chief Justice Madan...

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by a bunch of farmers against acquisition of their agricultural land and the government’s food security policy triggered intriguing remarks from the Delhi High Court, which wanted to know what “kind” of farmers they were. The petition was filed by the farmers against acquisition of their land in Kanjhawala. The petitioners contended that the move was against the government’s food security policy. The petition...