The Economic Times

  Revised balance of payments data in the RBI Bulletin for October suggest that India’s external strength is even greater than believed earlier. The data contain some puzzles:  India is overflowing with dollars for reasons still poorly understood. See the […]

After 13 years of half-baked economic liberalization, how difficult is it to run a business in India? Comparisons with other countries would be useful, but are technically difficult. The World Bank’s recent publication “Doing Business in 2004”, bravely tries to

I cheer the upsurge of microfinance in the last decade. Mohammed Yunus of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh first demonstrated the value or organizing poor women into self-help groups (SHGs), with the group guaranteeing repayment by any member. These microfinance groups

Three years ago, I suggested in these columns that India should import electricity rather than gas from the Gulf. The logic of that has strengthened with the rise in oil prices, and technological improvements in undersea power cables. The petroleum

Daridra Narayan in a three-piece suit. That sums up the \”reforms-with-a-human face\” budget presented by Finance Minister Chidambaram on Thursday. This is no dream budget, just an effort to flesh out the Common Minimum Programme. Its only dream is to

Finance minister Chidambaram will be looking for every possible way of financing the big increases promised in education, health and employment in the Common Minimum Programme. The CMP rules out easy money from the sale of majority stakes in profitable

The new conventional wisdom, after the general election, is that we must do more for agriculture. Politicians are determined to increase public investment in agriculture. Agricultural credit is to rise by a whopping 30% this year. Power tariffs have been

There is a huge but false assumption underlying much of the debate on the election result and its policy implications. The NDA lost, analysts theorise, because it neglected agriculture, or rural employment, or rural poverty. These armchair conclusions are contradicted

There is a huge but false assumption underlying much of the debate on the election result and its policy implications. The NDA lost, analysts theorise, because it neglected agriculture, or rural employment, or rural poverty. These armchair conclusions are contradicted

The common minimum programme (CMP) of the new coalition government promises to strengthen the Public Distribution System (PDS) and extend it to the poorest blocks in the country. Unfortunately, continuous ‘strengthening’ over four decades has strengthened leakages instead of giving