Remote controls are identified as technical devices which are used for various purposes ranging from the launching of space-ships to the monitoring of toy cars. But of late, these devices are being used to direct policies for nation states which are formally sovereign. We speak here of the powerful lobby of international credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor's (S&P), which has just delivered its sermon that India is no longer...

-The Hindu   Moratorium to be in place till December 31, 2012 The government has decided to initiate legal action against cooperative banks and financial institutions violating the moratorium on Debt relief for fish workers. Meeting Minister for Fisheries K. Babu announced this after a meeting with Minister for Cooperation C.N. Balakrishnan and chairman of the Debt Relief Commission for fish workers M.R. Hariharan Nair here on Sunday. Mr. Babu said the moratorium would remain in...

The robust 9 per cent –plus growth in South Asia till 2010, driven largely by India, where it came down to around 7 per cent in 2011-12, had one major qualifier: it was mostly associated with a rapid rise in labour productivity rather than an expansion in employment, according to the latest report Global Employment Trends from International Labour Office. Up until the end of the millennium, that is just a...

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday threatened to bring her anger to the streets of New Delhi and launch an agitation in the capital if the Centre didn't give in to her demand for a moratorium on Debt repayment. In a rare and exclusive interview to TOI at the Writers' Buildings in Kolkata, the Trinamool Congress chief didn't once utter the words "threat" or "pullout", but her message was...

A Union finance ministry panel is likely to call Bengal’s top officials next week to discuss the request for a Debt recast. This will be preceded by a meeting of a Trinamul Congress parliamentary delegation with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. Bengal, Kerala and Punjab have been officially dubbed Debt-stressed states. A panel headed by expenditure secretary Sumit Bose has been tasked to look into the problems of...