-The Business Standard Interim Budget's partiality to sports utility vehicles The interim Budget's decision to cut the excise duty on sports utility vehicles, or SUVs, from 30 per cent to 24 per cent will certainly benefit car makers (they have already reduced their price tags), but it raises some pertinent questions. Last year, while presenting the Budget for 2013-14, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had raised the duty on SUVs from 27 per...
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FCI to Increase Inter-Regional Movement of Foodgrains
-Press Information Bureau (Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution) In view of increased foograin movement requirement for the implementation of National Food Security Act, FCI has been making efforts to increase Inter-regional movement of foodgrains. It has been) has been rising over the years as under:- It is estimated that for the National Food Security Act (NFSA) implementation, against the allocation of 614.43 lakh tonnes, the...
More »Spending on subsidies surged, education and health lagged during 10 years of UPA -Sidhartha
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: When finance minister P Chidambaram presents his first interim budget on Monday, he is expected to devote a significant chunk of his speech - which may be between 12 and 18 pages - to UPA government's spending on social sector schemes, especially health, education and rural development. But what is probably going to slip through is the fact that these sectors actually witnessed a comparatively...
More »Impose 30% cess on diesel cars, panel tells Supreme Court -Dhananjay Mahapatra
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Senior advocate Harish Salve startled the Supreme Court on Monday by presenting a report which established a direct link between death of 3,000 children annually in Delhi to the increased pollution level attributable mainly to more diesel cars on the roads. Salve said subsidized diesel price was almost at par with CNG, leading to a massive increase in sale of diesel cars. As a result, emissions...
More »The politics of particles -Sunita Narain
-The Business Standard Chulhas - cook stoves of poor women who collect sticks, twigs, leaves and every other biomass material they can find to cook meals - are today at the centre of failing international action. The concern is that women are breathing toxic emissions from the stove and that these same emissions are also adding to the world's climate change burden. The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 established that...
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