-The Hindu The comprehensive clean-up that the public sector oil marketing companies recently initiated in the liquefied petroleum gas distribution system is a commendable if long overdue effort to check what had evidently become a free-for-all game. Groaning under the “subsidy burden” in a market sector where consumption levels of the convenience fuel had skyrocketed over the decades, the companies first moved collectively to computerise data with regard to LPG consumers...

-The Business Standard The move is aimed at having a stringent regulatory system while bringing in uniformity in approach for pricing of drugs  The drug price regulator would now visit manufacturing facilities of pharmaceutical companies while fixing prices of essential medicines. The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has issued internal guidelines putting in place norms for verification of actual cost data, provided by companies, through plant visits.  The move is aimed at...

-The Hindu The Right to Information Act was a marvel in a country that boasted unbreachable barriers between the ruler and the ruled. It was outside the imagination of the ordinary folk raised in a cloistered environment of fear and secrecy that they could actually call for and obtain records of decisions that critically impacted their lives. Yet in only seven years, the RTI law has not just penetrated the fortress...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: What the demolition of the disputed structure at Ram Janmabhoomi could not do in 1992, stray rumours did in Faizabad 20 years later on October 24 this year. It was Dussehra day and the processions carrying Durga idols for immersion were passing through the city at their usual pace. Then suddenly rumours of a stone being thrown at idols spread like wildfire. Within hours, it singed...

-The Hindu Violations of Coastal Regulation Zone and Environmental Impact Assessment notifications make official claims questionable The debate over nuclear energy will go on, but the issue with the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) is one of the several illegalities on which it is founded. In 1988, India inked the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant deal with the former Soviet Union. Two key elements in it were: the highly dangerous and toxic “Spent Nuclear...