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| T N Ninan: Think the future |
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| The time may have come for India to stop thinking of five-year plans, and to focus instead on 10- and 20-year scenarios. Long-term scenario-building achieved a new level of popular awareness when Goldman Sachs came out with its Brics report, in 2003 — positing that India and China would become two of the three largest economies in the world in the space of roughly one generation. Since that eye-popping statement, the story about the rising economies, and of shifting power balances, has become the stuff of everyday journalism. But, as yet, most people are only dimly aware of what transformational change will come to mean. ...Read |
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| Nancy Birdsall & Arvind Subramanian: Reduce verbal emissions first |
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| The emerging consensus is that no agreement on climate change — at least not one with specific commitments — will be reached at next month’s summit in Copenhagen. Environmentalists and policy-makers in many countries are dismayed and discouraged. But, in fact, now the world has an opportunity to fix the problem which has stymied successful cooperation on climate change. ...Read |
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| Devangshu Datta: When Obama bows right |
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| North Indians travelling south of the Vindhyas experience disconnect in terms of body-language versus verbalisation. “Yes” in those parts is emphasised with a side-to-side shake of the head. That gesture means “no” in most other places. Foreigners visiting India are often equally foxed by namaskars. Putting palms together is common to many forms of prayer and not employed much as a peer-to-peer greeting outside India. ...Read |
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| V V: The Great Depression, 1929, and us |
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| Because of the close parallels between the current global financial crisis and the Great Depression, 1929, it is no wonder that there is no end to books on what we need to do now — or what it really meant then and who was responsible for the meltdown. Liaquat Ahamed, a professional investment manager for 25 years who has also worked for the World Bank and now an adviser to several hedge fund groups in the US, has come with his own diagnosis of what happened to the West after World War I, of bubbles followed by busts and a cascading series of events that led to the Great Depression, in Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World (William Heinemann, Special Indian price, Rs 1,185). ...Read |
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| Sunanda K Datta-Ray: It's payback time |
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| Londoners were regaled recently with the spectacle of their former deputy mayor cleaning out a public lavatory wearing a bright fluorescent orange jacket emblazoned with the words “Community Payback”. It must have been even more exciting for viewers than Marie Antoinette in the tumbril on her way to the guillotine for it was not the end of the road for Ian Clement. He will soon return from the lavatory to face the music of daily life, when some of the real fun might start. ...Read |
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| Ashok K Lahiri: Has China moved to the centre? |
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| A rising China has not only inched closer to the US, it has also developed backward linkages - through the ‘disassembly line’ - with a host of other countries, including developed ones. ...Read |
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| Need some serious jugaad |
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| Dastkar’s Nature Bazaar always wears a festive look with flags fluttering bright in the sun, colourful tents, folk music and handicrafts galore. That’s why I was disconcerted by my friend Veena’s somber face inside Karm Marg stall. She was busy on the phone, and before I knew what was wrong, she had slipped away to not return for the rest of the day. “What’s up?” I queried the next morning. She rubbed her eyes tiredly: “We’re having funding issues. The financial meltdown in the West has been quite tough on organisations like ours that have benefited greatly from foreign aid... ...Read |
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| Kishore Singh: Art's no mirage here |
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| My son has a list of people he wants me to meet in Dubai, friends of his, or family of friends, or friends of friends — clearly, his social skills are better honed than mine. I don’t know anyone in Dubai I can go cold-calling on, besides it’s not Dubai I’m going to over the weekend, I remind him, it’s Abu Dhabi. “Oh, that’s so boring,” he says, “why don’t you cancel your trip and I’ll take you to the movies instead?” It’s not an option, I tell him. “Where’s Abu Dhabi?” my daughter asks, showing an ignorance of geography that has always shocked my wife. Now my wife explains to her, “It’s where the money is. ...Read |
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| Jaimini Bhagwati: More standard ratings, less moody ones |
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| Standard and Poor’s (S&P) and Moody’s continue to dominate the credit rating industry in terms of global reach and acceptance. Effectively, S&P and Moody’s are a duopoly at an international level even though there are many regional and country-specific credit rating agencies (CRAs). Further, Moody’s is the only publicly-held company among the larger CRAs and its high profit margins seem to indicate monopoly pricing power. ...Read |
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| Shobhana Subramanian: Who'll finance 'affordable' housing? |
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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. ...Read |
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| Sunita Narain: Rich land of the poor |
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| Take a map of India. Now mark the districts of the country in terms of forest wealth. Then overlay on them the water wealth of the country — the sources of streams and rivers that feed us. On this, plot the mineral wealth of the country — iron ore, coal, bauxite and all things nice that make economies rich. But don’t stop here. Mark on these wealth of India, another indicator — districts where the poorest people of our country live. ...Read |
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| 'A Himalayan double whammy' |
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| For almost a decade now, Maharaj K Pandit has been spending a lot of time in the eastern and western Himalayas studying the changes to the fragile ecology brought about by large-scale development projects. The current research of Pandit, who is the director of the Centre for Inter-disciplinary Studies of Mountain & Hill Environment (CISMHE) as also the director of the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Delhi, is tracking the biological signatures of climate change in the Himalayas. In a forthright response to the controversial report released last week by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) which says the glacial retreat is not linked to climate change, Pandit says India oscillates between “a conspiracy of silence and a conspiracy of denial” on critical issues. Although his specialisation is biology, Pandit has been conducting multi-disciplinary research on the changing Himalayan environment and has come up with some startling findings. ...Read |
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| Nitin Desai: A new global oligarchy |
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| At the Pittsburgh Summit on September 24-25, 2009, the leaders determined that the G-20 will replace the G-8 as the “permanent council for international economic cooperation”. A new global oligarchy is coming into being and India is a part of this charmed circle. We are chuffed about the invitation to sit at the high table. In Washington next week, President Obama will ensure that this feeling of having arrived is further reinforced. ...Read |
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| Arvind Singhal: A silent revolution in the making |
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| As India goes through an extraordinary demographic shift in an environment which is also seeing an extraordinary economic change, there are many interesting implications for the country and society and, of course, businesses and would-be-entrepreneurs. ...Read |
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| Barun Roy: For Tagore's sake |
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| I don’t wish to get into the question of who’s right and who’s wrong, but the recent turmoil at Visva-Bharati, in Santiniketan, West Bengal, is highly disturbing and it diminishes its sanctity as an institution founded by Rabindranath Tagore. The simmering problems that have plagued Visva-Bharati for long and culminated in an ugly showdown between its vice-chancellor and its faculty and employees call for an urgent and convincing intervention by the highest authorities in New Delhi. ...Read |
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| Bhupesh Bhandari: The reign of rural retail |
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| Monsoon rains have been 23 per cent deficient this year. As the news from the Met office worsened week after week right through June, July and August, marketers became a worried lot. Urban markets had turned soft well over a year ago. The financial meltdown and fears of joblessness made it worse. But rural markets had held steady. The farm loan waiver, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and increases in support prices of major crops in the run-up to the general elections ensured adequate money in the hands of rural customers. ...Read |
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| K Subrahmanyam: Partnering with the US: Yes we çan! |
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| A large number of commentators on Indo-US relations seem to think that when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets President Barack Obama next week in Washington DC, the latter will not be able to match his predecessor George Bush’s enthusiasm for India. This baseless pessimism is based on the view that the US is compelled to be on cordial terms with China because of economic compulsions. ...Read |
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| A K Bhattacharya: Wanted: A watchdog for airport services |
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| For a few months after the domestic arrival lounge at the Delhi airport was rebuilt by its private-sector management, the new facilities there looked impressive. Ignore for the moment the maintenance of cleanliness and orderliness within the lounge, which was indeed a welcome relief, the facilities outside the lounge also showed a distinct improvement. ...Read |
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| M J Antony: Urge to litigate |
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| It is well known that the government is the largest litigant in the courts. It is less known that it starves the judiciary of funds. It is even less known that it chokes the courts with unnecessary suits. The last one frequently invites drubbing from the Supreme Court. ...Read |
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| 'Do we need a new spectrum policy?' |
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| Telecom spectrum and licensing reform are key to India’s economic future. A recent research carried out by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (Icrier) shows a 10 per cent increase in mobile penetration raises GDP growth by 1.2 percentage points. The spectrum and licensing policy will determine whether the industry can deliver a long-term growth or will die a “death by a thousand cuts” — uncertainty and fragmentation may cause higher costs which, in the end, must be passed on to consumers. The long-term future of the industry is at stake. There is no room for complacency, or giving way to vested interests. ...Read |
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| 'Our aim is to connect rural India and have all Panchayats connected with broadb |
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| One of the few young members of the UPA government, Sachin Pilot -- Minister of State for the Department of Information Technology (DIT) -- has taken charge of this portfolio at a time when there are great expectations from the information, communications and technology (ICT) industry. In a chat with Leslie D’monte and Kirtika Suneja, the young minister broadly outlines his vision for the industry even as he's learning the ropes. ...Read |
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| Web Excl: Restoration of tax breaks on natural gas output |
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| Section 80-IB (9) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (‘Act’) provides for a tax holiday to an undertaking engaged in commercial production of mineral oil or refining of mineral oil. Tax holiday is available for a period of 7 consecutive tax years, starting from the year in which the undertaking begins commercial production or refining of mineral oil. ...Read |
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| Web Excl: Analysis of Report Card on implementation of Kelkar Committee |
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| The Report of the Task Force on the Implementation of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, 2003 (‘the Second Committee Report’) was presented in July 2004 and is popularly known as the Kelkar Committee Report. It aimed at reducing fiscal deficits within the country. ...Read |
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| Radhika Anand & Subir Gokarn: Rupee impact is large, |
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