Archives: All articles

It's a unique project boasting of a number of 'firsts'. Coming up at Andal near Durgapur in West Bengal is India's first aerotropolis, a tongue-twister meaning airport-cum-metropolis. What has been showcased as a grandiose scheme that would assist in the economic revival of the state, the project being set up by Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited (BAPL) is currently mired in controversies galore. The project has been delayed due to resistance to acquiring land from local people. What is worse...

There is considerable speculation about when the Planning Commission will be reconstituted and who will occupy the largest room in Yojana Bhavan. There are many in the government, possibly including Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, who are of the view that the Planning Commission is some sort of an anachronistic vestige of India’s discredited socialist past and should be scrapped. However, this is unlikely to happen. One important reason why the Planning Commission is not going to be wound...

If there were some who were expecting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's maiden Budget to unveil a series of proposals that would curb inflationary pressures in the economy, they are certainly going to be disappointed. Far from reducing inflation, some of the assumptions made in the Budget imply that the government is not at all expecting prices to come down. On the contrary, there is every reason to expect that inflation will persist, and stubbornly so. Here's why. Diesel prices are expected to...

As one writes this column in the second week of July, the turmoil in West Asia seems to be intensifying. As if the civil strife in Syria that has been going on for two years and the more recent conflict in Iraq were not bad enough, the armed confrontation between Israel and Palestine portends ill for this part of the world. The United States is no longer importing oil in large quantities after its own supplies of shale gas went up. But China and India have become more dependent than ever before...

Finance minister Arun Jaitley’s maiden Budget clearly indicates that there is little or nothing to differentiate between the economic policies of the BJP and the Congress. The only difference is that the BJP government has a clear majority in the Lok Sabha whereas the Congress led a coalition government and was, therefore, unable to go in for large-scale divestment of shares in PSUs. The UPA government was also unable to increase the cap on FDI in insurance and defence manufacturing because of...

Finance minister Arun Jaitley’s maiden Budget clearly indicates that there is little or nothing to differentiate between the economic policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress. The only difference is that the BJP government has a clear majority in the Lok Sabha whereas the Congress led a coalition government and was, therefore, unable to go in for large-scale divestment of shares in public sector undertakings. The UPA government was also unable to increase the cap on foreign direct...

The first budget of the newly-elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government seeks to raise revenues by divesting shares of government-owned enterprises and has raised limits on foreign investment in companies providing insurance services and electronic commerce, as well as those engaged in manufacturing defence equipment. While the budget presented on Thursday by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is holding this portfolio for the first time, did not contain any big-bang proposals or...

The turmoil in Iraq has the potential to upset all plans that are being drawn up by the Narendra Modi government to revive the Indian economy. Global prices of crude oil have already risen and could go up further. If that happens, the Indian economy will be impacted badly simply because the country currently imports around 80 per cent of its total requirements of oil. With domestic prices of petroleum products creeping up and with a deficient monsoon, the government will not be able to contain...

Despite the fact that India has a vast and varied mass media, freedom of expression has been constrained and restricted from time to time on account of various considerations. Such considerations include intolerance on the part of religious hardliners or fundamentalist groups, pressures exerted by politicians and political parties, as well as the influence of corporate captains who control advertising expenditure which funds the media. Despite the diversity of the media in India, this sector...