The Times of India

It is now 10 years since the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) was enacted with fanfare to save India’s poor. India has just suffered two droughts in a row, so rural works are important to relieve rural […]

India’s exports have been declining for 13 months. To reverse the trend, the commerce ministry wants to exempt exporters in special economic zones (SEZs) from all corporate taxes, including the minimum alternative tax (MAT). This is a bad idea. It

Tribals are the poorest, most oppressed community. Maoists say revolution is the only way forward for them. That’s dead wrong. Last month I visited Dediapada taluka, Gujarat. Every tribal village there has tractors, hundreds of villagers have motorcycles, and the

An avalanche of dollars exiting China threatens to smother all emerging markets (EMs), including India, and cause a global recession. Almost $ 600 billion have exited China in the last six months, a mammoth $100 billion per month.This would have

I am Charlie. I am for free speech, even if it offends somebody. Indeed, free speech must necessarily offend somebody: speech that offends nobody can only be highly circumscribed. Obviously, free speech can be curtailed if it calls for violence

Mixing morality and taxation typically produces hypocrisy. The Subramanian Committee on the goods and services tax has proposed an ultra-high rate of 40 per cent for sinful goods, against the standard rate of 17-18 per cent. Naturally, the sin list

The era of superpower hegemony is over, and that of non-state actors has arrived. Fourteen years after 9/11, the US has — let’s be blunt — been repeatedly defeated by radical Islam. Look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, or

I am amazed when people ask me why food prices, notably that of dal, have gone up. India has just suffered two consecutive droughts. The question to be asked is why, after a disastrous monsoon, food prices have risen so

Should some industries get tax breaks that others don’t? In general, no. The finance ministry has come out with proposals, for public discussion, to abolish several existing tax breaks. This is a building block of the Budget promise of finance

There is much in common between those who hit Paris last week and Mumbai on 26/11. Let nobody pretend, like elements of the left, that Paris was just revenge against Western imperialism. ISIS aims to become the biggest imperialist of