Articles

The last Pay Commission award increased the salaries of government staff by almost 2 per cent of GDP, a wage explosion that sent most states deep into the red. Yet a potentially greater problem is the explosive growth of pensions. […]

CHENNAI: India has set an ambitious $50 billion target for its textile exports by 2010, union minister of state for textiles Dhananjaya Kumar said on Saturday. This would be achieved through \”modernisation of production process, value addition, increasing productivity and

THE CONGRESS party has done rather well in the state elections, but Sonia Gandhi looks unlikely to come to power at the Centre. The BJP has done rather badly in the state elections, but Atal Bihari Vajpayee can still hope

Till recently, a slump in industrial production meant an economic recession and great social pain. Not any more, though. Industrial growth in India declined to just 0.6 per cent in February and 1.3 per cent in March, among the lowest

INDIAN industrial growth plunged to just 0.6 per cent in February, the lowest level for years. This has led to a search for deep explanations and culprits. Some blame high interest rates, others blame stock market shenanigans, still others blame

EXTERNAL affairs minister Jaswant Singh has visited the United States of America, held an unscheduled meeting with President George W Bush, and returned home exuding confidence about the future of Indo-US relations. In fact, the outlook for Indo-US ties has

Chairman Mao once claimed to represent permanent revolution. In fact, permanent revolution is represented best by capitalism, the most iconoclastic form of economic organisation ever invented. Other systems ranging from feudalism to communism protect a decreed system, and regard attempts

THE HIGHLIGHT of Yashwant Sinha’s budget was not his tax changes but his promise of second-generation reforms. But implementation lies in the hands of not the finance minister but other ministers and state governments, many of whom pay only lip-service

Back in 1981, I remember veteran politician HN Bahuguna distributing handouts giving his reaction to the budget immediately after the budget speech. To the naive, it looked an admirably fast reaction. But I realised that Bahuguna must have drafted his

Of India\’s many colonial legacies, the fetish about budget secrecy is one of the most absurd and anachronistic. A British Chancellor of the Exchequer once had to resign after dropping a hint that the tax on cigarettes might go up