Buying and running cars and two-wheelers could soon become a costly affair with a Planning Commission working group suggesting a green surcharge of Rs 2 on every litre of petrol, a green cess of 3% of the annual insured value of all private vehicles and a steep urban transport tax to be collected at the time of purchase of private vehicles.  The panel, headed by Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan, has...

In U.P., where 70 per cent of the people depend on agriculture, FDI in retail does not produce any cheer. ON a misty Monday morning in early December in Muradnagar, a small town in western Uttar Pradesh, numerous tractors and trucks, loaded with jaggery and driven by farmers themselves, lined up in front of the smallest grain mandi (market) of the region. With unusual patience, the drivers waited for their...

Tamil Nadu’s free laptop distribution scheme, involving what is said to be the largest government order for computing equipment in India, hangs in the balance as all but one vendor, hit by the hard disk shortage created by recent floods in Thailand, have refused to sign on to the state administration’s delivery schedule. “Out of six vendors only one has signed an agreement and we have given a purchase order,” an...

Lack of adequate credit - the lifeblood for any company is threatening to derail fledgling attempts by hundreds of dalit entrepreneurs to overcome deep socio-economic barriers and break into mainstream business.  Without credit, such entrepreneurs would also struggle to cash-in on the Rs 7,000-crore business opportunity opened up by the central government's new dalit-friendly sourcing plan, unveiled last month.  Credit disbursements to dalit entrepreneurs through 20-odd schemes run by the Ministry of...

The FDI in retail debate has apparently fully traversed the realm of reason and for it seems to have degenerated into name-calling. I had intimation of this when a diplomat who meets me from time to time asked me if I was being put up, for a price, by Indian corporate interests to stymie the entry of the big western firms like Wal-Mart and Carrefour? I can well imagine the...