The government has removed from a proposed bill a clause that would have made builders liable to be jailed for making false promises about houses to customers, housing ministry sources have said. The initial draft of the Real estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, which is awaiting cabinet clearance, provided for a jail term of up to three years as well as a compensation of up to 10 per cent of the...

-The Telegraph   The New York Times has reported that Wal-Mart, the US-based retail giant, hushed up an internal investigation sometime after the company was told of a bribery campaign to obtain licences and facilitate rapid expansion in Mexico. Some of the alleged instances of bribery are certain to ring a bell in India where it is not too difficult to bend rules for a price. The New York Times said its “examination...

NEW DELHI: It could be a second innings for special economic zones, especially those held up for years, with the commerce department proposing fresh tax concessions and a cut in the minimum area requirement to a quarter of the present specifications. The department has suggested that any zone that is not built around the identified 40 million-plus cities and state capitals would be eligible for duty benefits on capital investment for...

Inaccuracy in reporting court proceedings has caused friction between the press and the legal community On the morning of 10 August 2011, senior lawyer Harish Salve looked upset as he entered Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.H. Kapadia’s courtroom, holding a newspaper that had published an article on a case he was arguing in the Supreme Court. Salve complained that the article in question, written by a journalist at news agency Press...

The media's failure to recruit Dalits is a betrayal of the constitutional guarantees of equality and fraternity. There were almost none in 1992, and there are almost none today: Dalits in the newsrooms of India's media organisations. Stories from the lives of close to 25 per cent of Indians (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) are unlikely to be known — much less broadcast or written about. Unless, of course, the stories are...