-The Economic Times One in four posts of government statisticians are lying vacant, the government has told a parliamentary committee. The news comes amidst repeated criticism by analysts of the quality of official government data in recent months. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has told the parliament standing committee on finance that there are about 26% vacancies in the Indian statistical Services and Subordinate Statistical Service. According to the report...

Drug smugglers and third-world dictators laundering ill-gotten wealth through secretive banking systems in tax havens is an anachronistic image from crime novels. Leveraging US' remarkable success in compelling tax havens to block terrorist financing, the G20/OECD have successfully persuaded tax havens to improve tax transparency and participate in an international regime of information exchange.  All tax havens have committed to OECD standards for tax transparency and are executing Tax Information Exchange...

-Mid-Day.com Politicians are not known to be fans of the Right to Information Act, but now they seem to have discovered that they can use the same law to obtain details on RTI activists' work, allegedly in order to know which activist they need to harass to prevent the next big expose. RTI activists claim that political leaders are making their proxies use the sunshine law to know what information the activists...

In a move that could end a face-off within the government on the proposed food security Bill, the food ministry has decided to make everyone, except the so-called creamy layer, eligible for receiving state-subsidized foodgrains. Those who can afford to pay market prices will be kept out of the intended list of beneficiaries through the introduction of the exclusion criteria in the Bill, which will also seek to allocate foodgrains on...

-The Economic Times   The much-awaited Food Security Bill, which is being vetted by Parliamentary Standing Committee, may see some changes before being cleared. "The committee may go for universalising the distribution of grains to cover wider range of population," ministry sources said. According to the original bill, the government is planning to make foodgrain available at low prices only to 'certain' targeted sections, that is, the below-poverty line population dividing the...