-The Indian Express Conspiracy theories are a handy standby when one wants to avoid the effort of critical thinking. So Tavleen Singh would rather rely on “the foreign hand” — that old bogey out of Indira Gandhi’s box of tricks — than examine facts that reveal uncomfortable truths. Lamenting the closure of the Vedanta aluminium refinery at Lanjigarh, Orissa (‘Why India could remain forever’, IE, September 30), Singh asserts that, if...

-First Post It is impossible to talk about Indian publishing without discussing Samir Jain, whose invisible hand  guided The Times of India group to become  India’s – and probably the world’s – most profitable media company. Despite its relatively small size in the global league (Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp is 20 times bigger in terms of revenues), Jain’s Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL) packs a huge punch and is Indian publishing’s...

-The Hindu Organised retail involving FDI and international players can lead to a shrinking of traditional small merchant trade. That is bad news for political parties and governments. When discontent among traders brews, they act. A. Srivathsan looks at how Japan, Indonesia and Thailand responded, using zoning laws and size regulation as a control mechanism. Look East to find out what happens when foreign retailers set up shop. Asia’s recent economic history...

-The Hindu While the Internet growth story in India seems promising, individual users are yet to play their rightful role. Individual consumption is placed at 29 per cent — much lower than the international figure of 45 per cent, which means the Internet economy in India continues to be driven by large companies. By 2015, the Internet sector is projected to become bigger than the education sector, and equal to the...

-The Hindu Efforts of Jairam and Jyotiraditya to talk them out of it fail Dhanalakshmi, a 22-year-old from the Paliyar hill tribe of Tamil Nadu, is a long way from home. At 7 a.m. on Wednesday, she will join about 60,000 other landless poor, Adivasis and Dalits who have streamed into Gwalior from all parts of the country for a padayatra to the national capital, to present the demand that each of...