| Letters: Blame it on NREGS | 23-NOV-09 |
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| At last, there is an official admission that there is double-digit inflation in food articles, even according to the Wholesale Price Index. Till about a few weeks ago, this was downplayed on the ground that the total index showed a low inflation level; there was even a fear about deflation setting in! There was a standard, perhaps funny, explanation that the high inflation rate was due to the low base effect. One hears this nonsensical explanation only in India. One would not find it in any article on the subject in an internationally-recognised professional journal. This is an arithmetical and not an economic or technical explanation of the problem. |
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| Dr Van and Mister Who | 21-NOV-09 |
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| EU president: Hailing from Belgium and having a name difficult to spell shouldn’t disqualify anyone for a job. Herman Van Rompuy certainly lacks the stardust of some of the candidates who might have been appointed to the job of EU council president, like the UK’s Tony Blair or Spain’s Felipe Gonzales. |
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| Shobhana Subramanian: Who'll finance 'affordable' housing? | 20-NOV-09 |
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| Brotin Banerjee is happy. He has been able to sell a fourth of the 1,500 apartments of his affordable housing project in Boisar, about 100 km from Mumbai, to people who he describes as belonging to the “informal sector”. These are buyers, the managing director of Tata Housing explains, who don’t have a bank account and, therefore, wouldn’t qualify for a bank loan. |
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| The man who'd map consciousness | 17-NOV-09 |
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| Only the steady tide of readers overflowing into the aisles of the Gulmohar Hall indicated that this was not just another book discussion at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi. Vilayanur Ramachandran’s lecture drew students, fellow neurologists and inquiring readers in such numbers that we could easily have filled the nearby Stein Auditorium. |
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| Inflation rises to 1.34% in October | 15-NOV-09 |
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| The first series of monthly wholesale price index (WPI) data showed that headline inflation rose marginally to 1.34 per cent in October, primarily due to a year-on-year increase in fuel prices. |
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| Letters: Who's to blame? | 13-NOV-09 |
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| The 3G wars seem to be getting hotter by the day, going by the number of newspaper columns they’re hogging. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee shot off a letter to Communications Minister A Raja saying the 3G auctions had to happen this year since the budget was depending upon Rs 30,000 crore from the auctions. Raja was quick to reply that, as head of the Group of Ministers on it, it was Mukherjee’s job to ensure the defence ministry released the required spectrum. The defence ministry then claimed that it had released the spectrum, only to be told that the spectrum it had ‘released’ never really belonged to it and, in any case, this had already been allotted to BSNL/MTNL. |
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| Emami: Betting on homeopathy | 10-NOV-09 |
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| Kolkata-based Emami, the Rs 2,200-crore fast moving consumer goods major, is on the lookout for local homeopathy companies, even sick units will do. Emami had acquired Kolkata-based M Bhattacharyya & Co, one of the country’s earliest homeopathy companies, three years ago. |
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| Who'll ride the Ghost? | 10-NOV-09 |
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| Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Asia Pacific Director Colin Kelly compares his company’s recently launched the Ghost to a sports jacket and the Phantom to a Tuxedo. The Ghost, a smaller car, sticks to the Phantom’s 2:1 roof-to-wheel height ratio. What is more, it has the same centre opening door configuration as its predecessor. It also has the same hand-crafted interiors and grill. But where the family of Phantom costs between Rs 3.9 crore and Rs 4.1 crore, the 16-inch smaller Ghost’s on road price is significantly lesser at Rs 2.5 crore. That’s nearly a third less than the Phantom. “We wanted something less formal and pretentious and more everyday,” says Kelly. Indeed, they’re both jackets, clearly addressing two very different niches. |
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| 'Separate index for primary, manufactured items better' | 06-NOV-09 |
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| With wholesale price inflation not reflecting true picture of food prices, the government today justified the introduction of separate index numbers for primary products and manufacturing items, saying the new mechanism give better reflection of price movements. |
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| Food inflation shoots up 13.39% | 05-NOV-09 |
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| The government today presented a more realistic picture of the price situation, saying the inflation of food items shot up by 13.39 per cent during the week ended October 24, driven mainly by soaring prices of potato and onion. |
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