Right time for policy reform The government is set to face disappointment on its expectation that the fertiliser subsidy will go down sharply this year due to a softening of international prices of fertilisers. It now appears almost certain that the total payable subsidy in 2009-10 may be around Rs 70,000 crore, against the budgetary provision of under Rs 50,000 crore. Since the government has made it clear that no additional...

The government’s bill to create a three-year diploma course to train “rural health practitioners” triggered protests from doctors today, who questioned the validity of such a diploma and threatened a statewide agitation. The West Bengal Health Regulatory Authority Bill will permit rural health practitioners with the three-year diplomas to treat patients in villages where qualified doctors don’t want to go. The health practitioners will not be called doctors, health minister Surjya Kanta...

Curbing inflationary expectations is the priority Food price inflation has been in double digits for almost a year. Officially this week it is clocking up 20 per cent, the highest in 11 years. Stories of inflation in pulses and vegetables have appeared repeatedly in newspapers all over the country. The minimum support price for wheat has more than doubled in the past three years. The sugarcane farmers invaded the roads of...

A large number of civil society organisations and common people from various districts of Rajasthan staged a massive protest rally in Jaipur on Dec 15 against the state government’s inaction in the implementation of social audits in the NREGS works. They have charged that the state government has deliberately avoided taking action against elected sarpanches who have managed to stall the process of social audits in the state. Over 1500...

Mamata Banerjee today asserted that land would not be taken forcibly for the dedicated freight corridors and multiple options were on the table to procure plots for other rail projects. “We will not take land forcefully for the dedicated freight corridor. We would negotiate and amicably settle the issue….what (is the problem) if there is a delay of four to six months,” the railway minister said during a debate on demands...