-Live Mint Step is another sign of government intent to move towards direct transfer for all programmes The Union cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal that will eventually lead to the direct transfer of cash subsidies to farmers for fertilizer, two weeks after it put in place the architecture to enable such a transition. The step is another sign of the government’s intent to move towards a regime of direct transfer of cash...

-CNN-IBN Just a day after Haryana government denied favouring Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and DLF, CNN-IBN has accessed documents showing how Vadra bought acres of land in the Mewat region of Haryana below the circle rate. The documents suggest Vadra has been on a property buying spree in Haryana and had picked up acres of land directly from farmers in 2008 and 2009. Vadra's firm Real Earth Estates Ltd...

-The Business Standard If Mr Vadra had to count his friends in the real estate business, they would be Corporation Bank, the Haryana government and DLF  Robert Vadra, who is at the centre of a controversy over his property dealings with realty giant DLF and others, began investing in real estate five years ago, in 2007-08. He was already a wealthy man by then, not a struggling businessman who could scrape only...

-The Business Standard Consumers should be free to choose their power distributor  Anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal’s recent campaign against power tariff increases by distribution companies in Delhi raises many valid issues, but the manner in which he has chosen to register his protests is unlikely to further that cause beyond a point. Instead, the campaign is likely to get embroiled in avoidable controversies, leading even to its derailment. In the first round...

-The Economic Times The recent decision of the government to allow FDI in multi-brand retail trade has attracted heated debate and emotive reactions. Though the main consideration for allowing FDI in retail is not its benefit for farm sector, the debate has predominantly focused on threats and benefits to the country's farmers and the farm sector. Interestingly, the main stakeholders, i.e., farmers, have not reacted much to the policy decision and...