-The New York Times India's coalition government just celebrated the third anniversary of its tenure with a self-congratulatory banquet that could not have been more poorly timed: India's currency, the rupee, is falling; investment is down; inflation is rising; and deficits are eating away at government coffers. While short-term growth has slowed but not ground to a halt, India's problems have dampened hopes that it, along with China and other non-Western economies,...

On 23rd May, Moneylife wrote on how a Kerala citizen was denied access to Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel Report (WGEEP). The Central Information Commission and the Delhi High Court ordered the ministry to make it public. It has now been uploaded on its site Just when one wondered whether the ministry of environment & forests (MoEF) would turn to the Supreme Court after the Delhi High Court on 17th May,...

By not resolving the definition of ‘public purpose,' the Land Acquisition Bill keeps the door open for misuse It has taken more than 110 years for the government to draft a new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill. But despite mounting evidence of widespread misuse of government authority in taking over farm land and the increasing protests against the legal ambiguity that abets such exploitative practices, the revised legislation remains dubiously...

A probe panel of the road ministry has recommended a CBI investigation into allegations of fraud against private contractors involved in the Lucknow-Muzaffarpur highway project. The inquiry committee, instituted by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, supported findings of the World Bank Institutional Integrity Unit report, which alleged fraudulent practices and graft by private contractors involved in the Lucknow-Muzaffarpur highway project. The committee, formed in April by minister CP Joshi, recommended...

-The Economic Times A parliamentary panel on Tuesday proposed tougher norms for acquiring land for industrial use, as it finalised the new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development, in a report due to be tabled in the House on Thursday, proposed a more stringent definition of 'public purpose' to ensure that the government does not acquire land for private businesses. According to the report, the...