-The Times of India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Saturday that unauthorized collection of deposits promising high returns has to be curbed as the Centre unleashed a multi-agency probe on chit funds and money pooling firms in West Bengal and the eastern region. Rattled by the collapse of the Saradha group in West Bengal, the Centre has asked various agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Income Tax department, the ministry...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Supreme Court judgment on the Novartis-Glivec case is remarkable because it has gone beyond the specific technical and legal issues surrounding patents and has put the matter in a much larger political and economic perspective. The deeper implication of the judgment is that it is not only justified to deny patents when incremental innovation is trivial as in the Glivec case. The judgment has linked the...

-The Times of India The enforcement directorate's probe into alleged money laundering by the scam-scarred Saradha group may cover important politicians and their kin, besides media professionals, exposing them to the risk of confiscation of their bank accounts and properties. Sources in the ED, which has already registered a case in Guwahati, said the agency will issue summons to all those who helped siphon off money that Saradha had mopped up from...

-The Indian Express Kolkata: Saradha Realty Ltd, which has gone bust now, may be just the beginning of the unfolding of a deeply entrenched Ponzi scheme network involving dozens of other companies in West Bengal, some of which also wield considerable media power given their ownership of television channels and newspapers. According to information available with the union corporate affairs and finance ministries, six companies, against whom market regulator Securities and Exchange...

-Hard News While Narendra Modi's apologists will selectively quote from the latest CAG audit report on state finances that revenue earning has registered an upswing, they will compulsively forget that "the fiscal deficit of Rs 11,027 crore in 2011-12 was met out from a net borrowing of Rs 15,083 crore". The CAG has remarked that "an increase of 41 per cent in the market borrowing in 2011-12 over previous year for...