Its founder president, Ashok Chauhan, was charged with fraud in the 1990s by authorities in Germany, where he ran a network of companies. He returned to India and was never extradited. A plastics company in the U.S. also sued Chauhan in 1995 for failing to pay $20 million in debts. "They are a subsidiary of a conglomerate of companies," said Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of State College and Universities. "This is by no means reassuring, if you ask me."   read more

The NDA government has ordered a surprise cut of nearly 20% in its current healthcare budget, according to sources in the health ministry. India’s public spending on health is already among the lowest in the world. With this reduction, key disease control initiatives would be at risk.   read more

The opposition has stalled proceedings in the Rajya Sabha over a campaign by Hindu hardliners in Uttar Pradesh to convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism. This controversy is now affecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reform agenda - opposition members forced the suspension of the Rajya Sabha session on Monday, thereby preventing the NDA government from tabling the insurance reform bill.   read more

It’s tough being India’s richest man. Mukesh Ambani, worth an estimated $20 billion, must have several hundred thousand people on his payroll, but the names of only two raised eyebrows this week. The news that two senior politicians Ravi Shankar Prasad and Manish Tewari were earlier paid around $100,000 each per year for ‘legal consultancy’ has shocked many even in India, a country inured to the cosy relationship between business and politics.   read more

The aviation industry is witnessing the slow collapse of SpiceJet as it runs out of money to pay its operating costs. On Wednesday, the airline was refused fuel by oil companies, and all its flights were grounded till 4pm, leading to thousands of passengers being stranding at airports across the country. The government, by trying to force state-owned companies to throw good money after bad at SpiceJet, can only delay the inevitable. The rot goes much deeper.   read more

@ShamiWitness, a pro-IS Twitter account, served as a wake up call for the Indian government. Run by a 24-year-old food company executive, Mehdi Masoor Biswas, he had 17,800 followers, including hundreds of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq. A Channel 4 News investigation revealed recently that this Twitter handle extolling the group's military campaign was run, not from somewhere in the Middle East, but from Bengaluru, 4,000 kilometres away.   read more

In a ruling that is being cheered by both activists and Indian pharma companies, the Supreme Court rejected German drugmaker Bayer’s last-ditch attempt to block the sale of a cheap generic version of its cancer drug Nexavar in the country. This decision is likely to encourage more Indian companies to come forward with generic medicines.   read more

The recent hullabaloo about ‘black’ money stashed by Indians in Swiss bank accounts has certainly helped to focus the government’s efforts on recovering these overseas funds, but the country’s interests may be better served by looking at the cash economy inside India. According to the Special Investigation Team (SIT), Rs. 4,479 crore ($715 million) is held by Indians in secret Swiss bank accounts, but illegal cash inside the country is more than 3 times larger: Rs. 14,958 crore ($2.3 billion).   read more

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India for one day, and was rewarded with a helicopter deal worth $3 billion and large energy deals. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also reassured Putin that Russia would remain India's top defence supplier, even though Delhi's options have widened since the end of the Cold War.   read more

India has finally dropped attempted suicide from the list of crimes punishable by prison. Section 309 was a law enacted under British colonial rule, under which anyone attempting to kill himself could be jailed for one year. The World Health Organization lists India as one of the countries with the highest suicide rates: 21.1 per 100,000 people in 2012.   read more

Uber has been banned from operating in Delhi after one of its drivers allegedly raped a female passenger on Friday night. Shockingly, the company had employed the driver even though he was arrested in 2011 on allegations of sexual assault. With the company failing to conduct a background check on the driver and the driver seemingly easily circumventing its vaunted GPS tracking system, many in India were left wondering where the layers of security that Uber promised actually were.   read more

The confrontation on a bus in Rohtak on November 28, between two sisters, three men and a belt, continues to reverberate, with doubts being raised whether the women were victims of ‘eve teasing’ or are actually bullies with a penchant for confronting men. Haryana is a largely patriarchal society, and the controversy comes amid growing concern in India about sexual violence against women.   read more

Delhi is the world’s most polluted city, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report. But what should make the government sit up and take notice is that 13 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are also Indian.   read more

Derogatory comments by first-time minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti have provided opposition parties with a convenient handle to attack the government in the Rajya Sabha – where the opposition commands a majority – as important legislation hangs in the balance during the current session of parliament.   read more

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was sworn in last May, he promised “minimum government, maximum governance”. But his first cabinet reshuffle last month belied this expectation, with his council of ministers expanded by 21 new members to a mammoth 66 ministers. These include one for the newly created ministry of AAYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy). While yoga and traditional medicine could do with government support, does this justify a separate ministry?   read more

During his first visit to Assam as prime minister, Narendra Modi has announced that India will go ahead with the ratification of the previous administration’s land boundary agreement with Bangladesh. In doing so, he has placed national interest above the regional populism favoured by the state unit of his own party.   read more

More than 2.9 million vehicles are expected to go off the capital’s roads following a landmark NGT order banning vehicles older than 15 years. With Delhi being ranked the world’s worst polluted city by the World Health Organization, the NGT had on November 26 barred all such vehicles – private cars, bikes, commercial vehicles, buses and trucks – from plying in the capital.   read more