“…the Committee categorically convey their unacceptability of the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010…The Committee would, thus, urge the Government to reconsider and review the UID scheme.…” This was the conclusion of Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance (SCoF), which examined the Bill to convert the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) into a statutory authority. With this categorical rebuff, the SCoF dealt a body blow to the Aadhaar project, which...

The government is going to make a final attempt to push Sonia Gandhi’s pet legislation, the Food Security Bill, at the Cabinet meeting this Sunday. Cabinet approval is vital if the Bill is to be introduced in Parliament within the few remaining days of this session. This could possibly be the last session before Assembly elections in five states. Food Minister K V Thomas told Business Standard, “We are trying to introduce...

Indian traders reject FDI in multi-brand retail and emphasise the need for a policy to regulate the labour-intensive sector. TRADERS across the country responded angrily to the Union Cabinet's decision to allow 51 per cent Foreign Direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail trade, disproving the arguments of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and the assessment of corporate India, which had tried hard to make it appear that traders and...

Global experience in retail trading by MNCs does not tally with the presumptions on which the UPA government's FDI policy is based. IN the course of the debate on the need to permit Foreign Direct investment in retail in India, two arguments have been advanced often. The first argument is that large organised retail is good for not just consumers, who would benefit from lower prices owing to cost efficiencies...

In U.P., where 70 per cent of the people depend on agriculture, FDI in retail does not produce any cheer. ON a misty Monday morning in early December in Muradnagar, a small town in western Uttar Pradesh, numerous tractors and trucks, loaded with jaggery and driven by farmers themselves, lined up in front of the smallest grain mandi (market) of the region. With unusual patience, the drivers waited for their...