scorecardresearch
Add as a preferred source on Google
Saturday, March 14, 2026
TopicSops

Topic: Sops

Cash now over development later — voters’ distrust of govts leads to more sops, lighter treasuries

Response from political parties, without exception, is to offer non-solutions to very real problems in agriculture, and of unemployment and low incomes. Palliatives are not solutions.

‘We are cracking down’— how Modi govt plans to make it tougher for states to fund freebies

The Narendra Modi government is looking at ways to check states’ spending on handouts like free electricity and rations. The first step is to tighten the noose on state borrowings.

Shun freebie promises, BJP tells state units after Modi’s ‘revadi culture’ jibe at opposition

At a meeting in April, top civil servants had warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the drain on state resources caused by freebies.

Govt planning SOP for terrorist funerals in J&K, says they need to be watched & regulated

Security forces believe the funeral processions, often of local boys, become a "fertile ground for new recruits".

Narendra Modi’s budget sops are darts in the dark, not election game-changers

Evidence shows budget handouts may not get Modi or BJP any more votes than they would have got otherwise. Samajwadi Party lost 2017 UP polls despite the sops.

On Camera

Communism is based on self-deluding assumptions, it can’t be realised in practice: GN Lawande

It is the law of progress that a few persons must go to the top to show the possibilities and opportunities, so that others might emulate and follow them, wrote GN Lawande in 1958

Red carpet for industry honchos as AAP kicks off Punjab investors summit. Rs 10,000 cr pledged on Day 1

At 2nd such summit in Punjab for top investors organised by AAP since it came to power in Punjab, Lakshmi Mittal announced his Bathinda refinery has increased production of LPG by 3,000 tonnes/day.

Supreme Leader Mojtaba, the man Iran must keep alive & the secret force ‘tasked with it’—all about NOPO

The Nirouyeh Vijeh Pasdaran Velayat, or NOPO, was the only force Ali Khamenei trusted.It was founded in 1991 and is more feared than the Revolutionary Guards.

Peaceful power transfers followed uprisings in India’s neighbourhood. It’s a sign of mature democracies

Rating democracies is a tricky business. I am only using the simple metric of who in the Indian subcontinent has had the most peaceful, stable, normal political transitions and continuity.