Cross-subsidies are one of the most favoured notions in socialist thinking: you charge the rich more than the poor for the same product (or similar class of product), and the rich therefore subsidise

Murderous subsidies

Business Standard

Rarely has the Indian stock market seen such dramatic yo-yoing. In October, the Sensex reversed a heady bull run and dipped about 12 per cent, only to swing right back up now. A month ago, hope was a

Windfall year

From time immemorial, the fact that blood is thicker than water has bedevilled issues of succession, whether in politics or business. Often, a preference for the legally direct descendant has clouded

Hail the chief

While planning new levies in the forthcoming Budget, the finance minister would do well to review the present system of taxation and get rid of anomalies in it. Apart from the plethora of tax

Tax anomalies

China signed power purchase agreements with private companies some years ago, committed itself to a specific rate of return on capital, then lowered the rate once the plants had been built. It did the

T N Ninan: By the rules

The Securities and Exchange Board of India has finally swung into action to check the irrational exuberance in penny stocks, and the move has already started yielding resultsin spite of the rise in

Take care of the pennies

The governments move to announce a modest hike of less than 1.5 per cent in the minimum support prices of rabi crops well ahead of their sowing season, is noteworthy for several reasons. The price

Small changes not enough

Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran is spot on in accusing the countrys private sector long distance carriersReliance Infocomm, VSNL and Bhartiof forming a cartel since tariffs in the sector are quite

Fixing the cartel

The government may well blame commercial users of LPG (and the usual hoarders) for causing the LPG crisis, and Hurricanes Rita and Katrina for causing supply problems, but the diversion of the

The LPG crisis

Half-way through the financial year, the news on the fiscal front is better than might have been expected, but not without some worry points.


Fiscal facts

It would be naive to expect Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to drop his tainted ministers in the course of the impending Cabinet reshuffle, more so since the UPA government appears to have decided to

How to shuffle

The fate of the Doha development agenda continues to hang in the balance as yet another round of high level talks to resolve the deadlock has ended in Zurichwith some progress made, but without a

Not yet there

Going by the official numbers, nearly 85 per cent of the countrys 5.87 lakh villages have been electrified. This sounds impressive. But the fact that one lakh villages and nearly half of the total

Villages without power

If youre looking for yet another reason why the government cannot be trusted to own and properly manage companies and banks, the UPAs decision to nominate Congress politicians as independent

They're our PSUs

The dirty truth is out. The long-standing scheme for subsidising kerosene, typically done in the name of the poor, is a giant boondoggle because well over a third of the beneficiaries are not the

The kerosene scandal

While a CII position paper on the impact of broadband penetration in the country estimates that it can yield an additional benefit of $100 billion over a decade through improvements in productivity

Broader policy, please

Going by the trends of agricultural exports and imports since 1991, it would appear that Indian economic reforms led to a perceptible spurt in exports but the advent of the World Trade Organisation

Making farms competitive

Since this is the third time the government has announced increased FDI limits in the telecommunications sector (the first time this promise was made was over a year ago in the July 2004 budget), what

False ring

The widespread expectations of a 25 basis point hike in the reverse repo rate by the Reserve Bank of India (the rate at which it pays to banks which deposit money with it) were met yesterday.


Better safe than sorry

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown is an old saying and Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress party, must be re-discovering how true it is.


Ms Gandhi`s dilemma

A labour ministry presentation to the parliamentary standing committee on labour on making labour markets more flexible has now been placed in the public domain for debate. 


The labour conundrum

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

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