-Reuters MUMBAI: Wal-Mart Stores Inc prepared its entry into India's supermarket sector in 2010 with a $100 million investment into a consultancy with no employees, no profits and a scant $14,000 in revenue. The company, called Cedar Support Services, might have been a more obvious selection four months earlier: it began its corporate life as Bharti Retail Holdings Ltd, according to documents filed with India's Registrar of Companies. The Cedar investment is now...

-The Indian Express The UPA’s cash transfer scheme — delivering over Rs.3.2 lakh crore in subsidies and welfare programmes to the poor, directly to their bank accounts — has raised fears in many quarters about the capacity of a rickety state apparatus to cope with messy implementation issues. Our collective self-confidence about being able to implement any new policy is so low today, we seem to be paralysed by the mere...

-First Post If we are willing to believe the best practice examples of cash transfers from Brazil and Philippines, and trust the UPA on the fact that their cash-for-subsidy is going to be all hunky-dory, we also have a right to believe Sitaram Yechury’s concerns about the fancy plan. According to the CPM leader, the cash transfer is a ploy by the government to dismantle the PDS and systematically reduce subsidies. “This is...

-The Hindu Cleansing political parties and elections of illegal money is the first step towards tackling the evil of graft Corruption is nothing but a reflection of the distribution of power within societies. The country is where it is because the political system is self-perpetrating and no party is accountable to anyone except a coterie of people that dominates all decisions. Unless the political system is accountable, going after individual cases of...

-The Times of India The gridlock in Parliament over foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail is set to ease with the Manmohan Singh government - armed with ally DMK's support - dropping its resistance to a discussion under a rule that necessitates a vote. The detente over FDI could see fresh discussion between the ruling coalition and BJP over the winter session's legislative agenda with parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath expected to...