Try connecting any two points in the country with a railway line that should take the shortest or the most convenient route, and you can rest assured that others in the vicinity will want the line to

Keeping it straight

Business Standard

The governments new agricultural pricing and food management policy, approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Tuesday, is good in parts but also has an avoidable mis-step. On

Grain gain

While employment in the country is growing at rates never seen in the past, and experts have forecast full employment two or three years down the road, what is worrying is that this growth is

Small isn`t beautiful

Faced with sporadic and, at times, bloody protests over land acquisition, the government has come out with a new rehabilitation and resettlement policy which, though relatively rational and balanced,

Deceptive promise of more

What is a forest? Odd as it may sound, the country does not have an unambiguous concept of a forest. Neither the Indian Forest Act, 1927, nor the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, defines what a forest

Defining a forest

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will make its quarterly announcement of monetary and credit policy next Tuesday in the context of a rather complicated macro-economic environment. While the domestic

Maintain status quo

The uncertainty over the adequate availability of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) in the rabi season should be a matter of disquiet. Any shortage of this key phosphatic fertiliser at this stage can

DAP scarcity

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced its quarterly monetary and credit policy yesterday, in which it kept its benchmark repo and reverse repo rates unchanged, while increasing the cash reserve

Signal to banks

If, as newspaper reports suggest, a solution to the telecom tangle is in sight and may crystallise during the telecom secretarys meetings with the industry early this week, that is good news. No one

Sharing the booty

The Human Development Report (2007-08), released last week, has done what should have been attempted earlier: put the need to combat climate change at the centre of global economic endeavour. Among

The debate warms up

The government, for reasons best known to it, has opted for a low-key release of the countrys first-ever national policy on farmers. This policy has been keenly awaited ever since the National

Pro-farmer, in parts

Indian edible oil companies are said to be scouting around internationally for buying or leasing farms to grow oilseeds. This is an innovative way to deal with Indias perennial need for imports, and

The global search for land

As 2007 winds down and people begin to look ahead to what the new year might bring, it seems clear that there is little that can prevent what began as a sub-prime crisis in the US from ballooning into

Gloomy outlook

Last weeks international ministerial meet in New Delhi on avian and pandemic influenza has managed to put together an apparently sound 21-point road map for 2008, to improve countries preparedness

Preparing for a pandemic

In one of his first letters to the Prime Minister on the subject, Anil Ambani of Reliance Communications said the countrys GSM cellular operators had got an unfair benefit of Rs 20,000 crore, since

Auction is the best policy

The cold war between India and Pakistan over basmati seems to be unending. The latest blitz is in the form of the legal notice served on the commerce and industry ministry by the Rice Exporters

Fighting over basmati

From July to September, the Index of Industrial Production displayed an extent of volatility it had not done for the past four years. July saw the overall growth rate decline to 7.1 per cent over last

Up again

The Bali talks on threshing out a successor to the Kyoto protocol have turned out to be a disappointment. It is of course true that eleventh-hour developments forced the negotiators to agree on a road

Disappointment at Bali

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) must be patting itself on the back for a job well done, with the Delhi High Court upholding its order to stop the Indian operations of the

End this licence raj

With formal approval by the National Development Council, the process of designing the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, which runs from 2007 to 2012, is now complete. By government standards, the finalisation

Now for implementation

At a time when agricultural production needs a boost, and especially in the context of a potential shortage globally of foodgrains, it is a tragedy that the irrigation sector continues to suffer from

Slipping on targets

Incisive columns and editorial comment by top opinion leaders

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