The finance ministry is planning to change the face of banking in the Red corridors at the tribal heartlands of India. The move is part of the government decision to redraw its law and order management and development plans in view of the growing Naxalite menace threatening the Indian state. As the banks, like any other government institutions bear the brunt of Naxalite terror, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is mooting the...

In the wake of runaway inflation and the ensuing food crisis, the prime minister constituted three high-powered committees of chief ministers and central ministers to recommend ways of containing inflation, improving PDS and boosting agricultural production. The Working Group on agricultural production was chaired by Haryana chief minister B S Hooda, with CMs of West Bengal, Punjab and Bihar as members. Tucked away, largely unnoticed by the Indian media, as...

The recent spike in world food prices has further widened the gap between the developed and the developing economies. While, over 70 per cent of the world's population resides in poor countries, it has access to less than 40 per cent of the world's resources such as water, irrigated land, power, etc. This is a result of inconsistent economic progress (post-colonialisation birth pangs), rampant population growth and distractions such as...

The day Kumari Selja assumed charge as the Union minister for housing and urban poverty alleviation in the second United Progressive Alliance government, she got an unusual gift: a set of two books from none other than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The books, The Other Path and The Mystery of Capital, were by eminent Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, hailed as the “poor man’s capitalist”for his work on the informal sector....

Bowing to pressure from the political leadership of the Congress, the government will consider making food security universal, but at a higher price for the rich. Food security was an electoral promise of the Congress before the 2009 polls, but the initial draft of the Bill said that it would apply only to the poor. After Congress president Sonia Gandhi refused to accept the Bill in that form, an empowered group...