The interest rate in the call money (overnight) market surged close to 20 per cent last week. This is the market in which banks borrow from each other or other financial players, such as mutual funds,

Temporary spike

Business Standard

Farmers in Kolzari village in Yavatmal district, in the suicide-ridden cotton belt of Vidarbha, have reportedly vowed not to grow cotton any more. Even if driven by desperation, this is a wise move.

Moving out of cotton

Where has all the wheat gone? That was the question asked at the end of the last wheat marketing season in June 2006, when government procurement plummeted to its lowest level in years, despite a

Who has a wheat problem?

The power ministrys reported move to come out with a policy for promoting mega and ultra-mega hydro-power projects needs to be viewed with caution. The need to harness the countrys vast hydel power

Hydel should be small

Barely six months after Indias geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle, GSLV-FO2, broke up in the sky 65 seconds after its take-off, the countrys space scientists have more than made up for that

Space ambitions

The Supreme Court has done the country a service by arresting the mischief that has been sought to be done by politicians, who (it would appear) would like to take all contentious legislation beyond

Back on track

Goebbels is credited with the statement that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Had it not been for West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjees decision to come out with

Left off the truth

Even as a collective sigh of relief is heaved about the 14.4 per cent growth in industrial production during November, which takes it to above 10 per cent for the year so far, there are some elements

... but for how long?

With one more TV news channel going public with an issue of shares, the question arises: what is it that is making TV companies trade at lofty valuations? New Delhi Television (NDTV) trades at a

The fine print

The fifth Indo-Asean summit, held in Cebu in the Philippines, may not have been a deal-clincher for India, but the deliberations that took place there are important. Where the much-delayed free trade

Progress with Asean

Just when it seemed that the controversy over changing the Indian patent regime to make it compatible with the global agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights (Trips) is over, the issue

Patent controversy

Lalit Mohan Thapars passing represents the end of an era, in more ways than one. One of the stalwarts of the old Delhi families that dominated the industrial scene in the days of the licence-permit

LM Thapar

The Indian software and services industry has produced results for the October-December quarter that are exceptional, and indeed better than anything in recent memory. The industry seems to be gaining

Software saga continues

Wonders will never cease. Only a few years ago, the finances of state governments looked as if they could never be brought out of crisis. Today, they are looking better than the central governments

Too early to celebrate

The protests against land acquisition in Singur, Nandigram and Keonjhar might not have achieved their objective of subverting the projects for which the land was being taken over, but they have

Learn from Orissa

A welcome development on the fiscal front has been the toning up of tax administration, with initiatives such as the Tax Information Network (TIN). This and other measures have contributed

Administrative asymmetry

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will make its quarterly monetary and credit policy announcement later today, against the backdrop of a buoyant macro-economic environment. If the third-quarter

Agriculture strikes back

The water resources ministrys reported proposal to invest as much as Rs 5,000 crore in 32 districts affected by farmer suicides, with a view to ensuring water security, is a move in the right

Water bodies

The Union Budget that was presented last week has made a major effort to resuscitate India's economy and shown greater fiscal discipline by cutting government expenditure in the current year and promising a lower fiscal deficit in 2013-14. Nevertheless, the Budget can and will be judged on various fronts  what it provides to the private sector; its effect on jobs, the social sector and the environment; and how much it cuts government waste. And in some ways an important prism through which it should be viewed is what the Budget will mean for India's external vulnerability. If India is, as so many fear, vulnerable to a crisis of some sort because of its balance-of-payments weakness, then the Budget should have given greater priority to fixing this problem, and reducing the current account deficit. Unfortunately, viewed from that perspective, the Budget has not done enough.The outlines of India's difficult current account situation are already well known. A sustained rise in the price of

Managing current account

Budget might have far-reaching effects on start-ups

Angels in India

Violent words in political speech will lower the national debate

Careful, Mr Modi

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

Page 484 - Editorial Comment