-Kafila.org The last few months have seen an unusual public engagement around questions of secularism, freedom of speech, sedition and the like, with furious debates everywhere from our campuses, streets and TV studios to the floor of Parliament. The budget session has been enlivened by scenes of high drama, with the leading lights of the Treasury benches bringing colour, sound and fury to their tutorials on patriotism and nationalism. While these high-decibel...

-Business Standard Supply issues due to unseasonal rainfall behind price rise Mumbai: Green vegetables have become costlier in the past week owing to supply disruptions following intermittent unseasonal rainfalls and thunderstorms across major growing regions. In the benchmark Azadpur mandi in Delhi, the prices of cauliflower has risen the most by 58 per cent to trade currently at Rs 673 a quintal against Rs 427 a quintal a week ago. Interestingly, arrivals of cauliflower...

-The Hindu Business Line In 2015, vegetable, milk and cereal inflation was higher than all-India average   While food prices rose at a slower pace across India in 2015, the poor in the South and certain other parts of the country saw no respite and had to continue spending more for a decent meal. Manipur, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Jammu & Kashmir faced higher food inflation in 2015 compared with 2014,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a move that could significantly bring down prices of expensive medicines, a high-level committee has recommended capping of trade margins for costly drugs at 35% of MRP (maximum retail price). The recommendations - part of a report submitted by an inter-ministerial committee - have been put in the public domain by the Department of Pharmaceuticals, inviting comments on the suggestions. The committee was set up...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Modi government tries hard to signal a makeover but beyond the symbolic it does not change much. Budget 2016 is not important for the proposals that it has made but for what it tries to signal about the proposed makeover, in a limited way, of the Narendra Modi government. The budget does try hard to claim that the Modi government is not a “suit-boot” administration, an image...