The Congress today appears besieged and beleaguered with key allies and even members from its own ranks lining up behind the combined Opposition in vehemently opposing the Manmohan Singh government’s decision to allow FDI in multi-brand retail. But, paradoxically, this state of siege — reflected by the prolonged deadlock in Parliament with a quasi no-confidence motion hanging over it — also gives the Grand Old Party a great opportunity not just...

The 11th five-year plan promised the nation “inclusive growth”. It marked a departure from the earlier official position that the “benefits of growth” would automatically “trickle down” to the poor, and that if growth was not actually benefiting the poor, then the reason lay in its not being high enough. The 11th plan, by contrast, conceded that the “benefits of growth” did not automatically “trickle down”, but argued that growth...

The government's decision to set aside a 20 per cent quota for SC/ST vendors in its purchases, if accepted by every sector on a wider scale, has the potential to makegrowth pro-poor and inclusive. The Central government has finally announced a policy reserving 20 per cent of its purchases for micro and small enterprises run by entrepreneurs belonging to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. The new procurement policy will...

-Reuters   India's growth story is still "credible" and the move to open up the economy to global supermarket chains will help growth and control inflation, RBI governor Duvvuri Subbarao said on Friday. "It's commendable that government has taken the initiative. Let's hope that it will improve the logistics chain and supply chain management in agriculture," Subbarao said in a speech in Chandigarh. Late Thursday, the government approved 51 percent foreign direct investment in...

-The Hindu   ‘It has become imperative in view of climate change' Bio-fortified varieties of staple food grains, such as Vitamin-A-enriched ‘Golden Rice', or iron-enriched wheat, could improve the nutritional status of the world's poor, P. Pushpangadan, Director General, Amity Institute for Herbal and Biotech Products Development, said here on Thursday. Presenting a paper on the “Recent advances of agricultural biotechnology in the light of climate change” at the 81st annual session of the...