The Association for Democratic Reforms slams the Budget proposals on political funding, says they lack teeth and show the "lack of political will" in proposing real reforms.
The Civil Aviation Ministry is looking to increase air seat entitlement to Dubai by 20%.
Rationalisation of reserve prices in the ongoing spectrum auction helped the government to get Rs 40,000 crore of bids on the opening day.
India will finish their home series against Sri Lanka on December 24 before leaving for South Africa on December 28. They are scheduled to play a two-day warm-up tie starting on December 30 before taking on South Africa in the first Test on January 5.
Congress may give a privilege motion notice against the prime minister and Sitharaman.
'The Modi government has been taking credit for improvement in respect of the ease of doing business in India.' 'But when I look at the scams I cannot help feeling that it is too easy to do business with banks in India, if one is a Harshad Mehta, Vijay Mallya or Nirav Modi and their tribe,' says former Union home secretary Madhav Godbole.
Within a month of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) tabling the coal block allocation report in Parliament in August last year, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a First Information Report (FIR) against Hyderabad-based Navabharat Power Private Ltd for the coal block allotted to it in Odisha in January 2008.
A lot of the factors towards which the government has pointed to justify its moves on Jammu and Kashmir are in fact valid. Only, most of them have little to do with Article 370, says David Devadas.
Political funding of elections has led to the rise in black money in the economy.
The new minister must commit himself to supporting long-term defence plans or else defence modernisation will continue to lag and the growing military capabilities gap with China will assume ominous proportions, warns Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
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The anger against land acquisition is not only among landowners.
A well-established tax system would have a predictable buoyancy - how fast the collections grow as a proportion to the growth of the economy. But that is not the case with GST. It is still undergoing substantial changes as the government responds to structural as well as administrative glitches.
Investor lobbies and tax lawyers estimate the bill for international funds and banks could be as high as $8 billion
'From where prime ministers sit, it makes no difference at all who occupies the governor's post.' 'Literally anyone with a decent education or work experience can be appointed to the job, which is basically a managerial one with little room for manoeuvre,' says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
The controversial report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee, which gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the 2G spectrum scam saying he was "misled" by the then Telecom Minister A Raja, was on Tuesday submitted to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.
The persistence with Aadhaar, to the exclusion of all other identity systems, is a dangerous path and should be avoided if the risks of digital vulnerability are to be eliminated. Till such time that the ownership of the Aadhaar system is transferred to an independent body, concerns over Aadhaar's digital vulnerability will persist, says A K Bhattacharya.
The service conditions and judges' remuneration are not alluring .
'In China there is capital punishment for heritage theft. That is how they treat criminals, unlike us.' 'Here we treat them like it's a house-breaking theft.'
PSUs will get direct allotment.
Even as Indian Railways is gearing up to roll out high-speed passenger services, it seems set to record its worst performance in three years on accidents.
The Congress and the Left parties might move court to challenge LS speaker's ruling on Aadhaar as money Bill.
With the expected launch of The People's Liberation Army (Navy)'s second aircraft carrier on April 23, China will match India in carrier numbers.
Chidambaram said he feels that Dassault 'is laughing all the way to the bank', as the NDA government gave a 'gift'.
'Even though an India-China military conflict scenario seems unlikely, its possibility gets enhanced if our capabilities are seen to be inadequate by the adversary,' warns Vice Admiral Premvir Das (retd).
Sanitation is always clubbed with other departments, which lead to its neglect, says Devanik Saha.
India's telecom sector has been through dizzying peaks, troughs, policy U-turns, court battles, brutal competition, and daily controversies. India could go back to a private sector duopoly with just Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel surviving the mayhem. The third player, Vodafone Idea, could be history.
Year 2013 saw business leaders facing the ire of hostile investigative agencies.
The fear of another scam pushed the government into a rather long period of so-called 'policy paralysis'. To play it safe, the price of spectrum in all subsequent auctions was benchmarked to the high 3G rates, says Surajeet Das Gupta.
We dance on every small achievement and forget the long-term objectives: Ajit Gulabchand, MD, Hindustan Construction Company.
'The current budgetary practice of shifting expenditures off-balance sheet in order to be seen to be meeting fiscal targets should be discontinued; additional fiscal stimulus would be imprudent; individual income tax rates should not be cut; GST rates should not be raised now,' advise Arvind Subramanian and Josh Felman.
A better system of operating central and state PSEs, and indeed all commercial activities of the government, would require eliminating the current system that oversees them.
Air India needs to up the ante in order to compete with rival carriers.
'We will continue to ask why Modi and his government were benefactors to this AgustaWestland company, why within 40 days they overturned the ban?'
According to a new subsidy sharing formula, the payout of upstream oil producers like ONGC is to be reduced to the extent of Rs 4,500 per tonne oil development cess they pay to the government, sources privy to the development said.
Analysts were expecting the government to propose higher capital infusion for banks.
'We have to go through the process of obtaining informed consent.'
Mr Modi, it came across, did not want to be seen as favouring any one business group.
In the long run, the decision could bring clearer rules to a sector that has failed to provide India with enough power because it has been so hamstrung by confusion and scandals over concessions allegedly handed to government cronies.
Mr Modi can create a small temporary team in the PMO whose only job would be to listen to businessmen's mann ki baat referring to global best practices.
'If the RBI had done the right things, these mistakes would not have happened in banks, public or private,' says Ajay Shah.
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