The fertiliser subsidy bill, which used to be around Rs 13,000 crore till the beginning of this decade, has surged to over Rs 28,000 crore. Even as the numbers have climbed, the government has not

Re-working the subsidy

Business Standard

The finance minister argues, with some justification, that the tax paid by companies on dividends that they distribute is really tax that is paid on behalf of the shareholder who receives that

Double-tax directly

A spectre has been haunting India, the spectre of non-stop elections. Before Indira Gandhi broke the simultaneity of Lok Sabha and state assembly elections in 1971, India had had four election years:

Permanent elections?

A day before the Budget announcement, the government announced the de-reservation of 87 products that had till then been reserved for production by the small-scale industrial sector. Post the

Beyond de-reservation

If anyone needed a lesson in how integrated global markets have become, the last four weeks should have provided one that will not be forgotten easilyincluding in India, where the Sensex has fallen

All fall down

People in charge of policy face two challenges: correctly identifying a problem, then finding the right solution. The second is more difficult than the first. That perhaps explains why P Chidambaram

Three bad ideas

GDP growth has slowed in the last quarter to 8.6 per centwell below the years projected growth rate of 9.2 per cent. The non-oil export growth rate has dropped steadily in recent months, and in the

Slowdown ahead?

Bringing to fruition a proposal that had been revived by Jaswant Singh in 2003, after it had lain dormant for six years, the finance minister has announced that the Reserve Bank of India will be

Privatise first

It is easy, but still correct, to come to the conclusion that the sharp increase in power shortages over the years is due to the lack of investment in this critical sector. While power generation rose

Tripping up

Even as the Cauvery waters-sharing dispute continues to simmer, despite the Tribunals final verdict, another decades-old, and equally contentious, row over the distribution of the Ravi-Beas waters

Water remedies

It is said that morality and political power are incompatible. That may be true, but degree also matters. Even the most unctuous will therefore allow those in power some moral latitude while

The bigger scandal

It is easy to see the incongruity between India having the largest number of poor people in the world, and also the fourth-largest number of dollar billionairesgoing by the latest Forbes list, which

Wealth and poverty

The series of missives the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) and other government agencies have sent to various promoters of Hutchison-Essar, to clarify their stakeholdings in Indias

Back to the eighties?

The Reserve Bank has imposed caps on inter-bank liabilities; this is likely to restrict the business strategies of many banks, particularly foreign and private banks. At first blush, the RBI is right

Self-created problem

The crashing prices of telecom services, particularly the wholesale purchase of bandwidth, have thrown up many innovative applications. A natural idea is to buy bandwidth at wholesale prices and sell

Change telecom rules

The timing couldnt have been better, or worse, depending upon ones perspective. When the UPA government in India seeks to control markets, by banning exports and futures trading and fixing prices

More Chinese reforms

In the last two years, Indias gross domestic product (GDP) has expanded at 9 per cent, and that seems to be the likely rate for this year as well. With inflation at an average of 5 per cent annually,

End of the boom?

The Communists are learning an important lesson. They are finding out that while it is easy to get by doing nothing and opposing everything, when you actually try and do something positive, the whole

Left double-speak

Does plurality of information and choice, whether economic or political, help reduce economic disasters? It would seem so. As Amartya Sen has famously pointed out, democratic India has seen fewer

Why systems correct faster

You would think that once a broad policy approach is arrived at, after full debate, it would be applied across the relevant sectors. Yet, this is not happening in the media. For years, television news

Free the airwaves

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

Page 278 - Editorial Comment