Technically, we know how to check the black economy but the problem is political. More studies or committees and treaties with foreign governments are only to stall action. Another Joint Parliamentary Committee has been announced. The government has been trying to create an impression of being proactive with regard to tackling the black economy. The President's address and the speech by Sonia Gandhi in January mentioned the need to curb it....

The sharp rise in food prices inflation will remain a major cause of concern as inflationary pressures on the domestic front are likely to be exacerbated by higher levels of global commodity prices, the Economic Survey has said. It also indicated that the political turmoil in the Middle East and the “easy Money” policy being followed by developed nations trying to jump-start their own economies after the global recession of 2008-09...

The wife of a top PSU boss has been caught collecting bribe in gold bricks, the CBI said today, the charge suggesting that the corrupt remain as audacious as ever in spite of the shakedown in high places. Abhay Kumar Srivastava, the chairman and managing director of Navratna PSU Nalco, and his wife Chandni have been arrested. The CBI said Chandni took three 24-carat gold bricks weighing a kg each in...

The electronic post office launched this week has brought the familiar red and grey counters to your drawing room, making tiring trips and queuing up things of the past. The website www.epostoffice.gov.in offers Money order service, stamps and e-tracking of registered posts to start with. It creates a virtual post office on computer screens and leads customers to the counters. The decision to launch an electronic post office was part of the...

Cash transfers, the latest global development fashion, involve several risks in India, not least the risk of forgetting the need for continuing structural change. WHEN I was growing up, several decades ago, middle-class society in India was always a little delayed in catching on to Western fashions whether in music or dress or in other aspects. The past decades of globalisation seemed to have changed all that. Modern communications technology...