Would you rather buy a necessity like kerosene or food grains at a subsidy or receive an equivalent amount of cash instead? Would you prefer that the government decides your consumption pattern rather than figuring out on your own how to spend your income? One of the “big ticket” reform items in the budget was the announcement that subsidies on kerosene, fertilizers and Liquefied Petroleum Gas and delivery through the Public...

Ashok Gehlot's Budget speech lays emphasis on social welfare measures Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's Budget speech in the Rajasthan Assembly here on Wednesday laid emphasis on “positive results” of the State Government's work during the previous year for development of various sectors, and made a number of announcements for the welfare of different sections of society. In a significant declaration, Mr. Gehlot said a State-level Advisory Council would be constituted shortly in...

Lauri Myllyvirta, the Finnish Greenpeace campaigner who visited the Jaitapur nuclear power project area in Ratnagiri district last year, has denied that he showed any films or other material like photos to the local people agitating against the project. In an email interview from Indonesia, Mr. Myllyvirta said these claims were absurd. He visited the area on November 20, 2010 and left the next day. On Monday, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan...

The Orissa government seems to have landed in an embarrassing spot in connection with the submission of report to the Union ministry of Environment & forests (MoEF) on the issue of compliance with Forest Rights Act (FRA) at the Posco site. Though the state government had exuded confidence to send the report to the ministry before the end of February, claimants of FRA at the project site appeared to have played...

India faces the challenge of inappropriate use of antibiotics while Bharat copes with poor access to treatment, resulting in a policy conundrum and inaction. India was recently in the news for the wrong reasons. The serious threat posed by the newly discovered microbe, NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo--lactamase-1), resistant to many antibiotics, triggered alarm and panic. Predictions that the country will not meet the millennium development goal for child mortality caused dismay....