Does the government really have any clue about how to go about controlling prices? A quick survey of statements made by everybody from the prime minister downwards shows a picture of groping in the dark, while handing out empty assurances from time to time. What is worse, it's all smoke and mirrors for the public. Coming as it does from a government that is loaded with top-notch economists, it is...

Three years after lighting up the electricity-deprived remote villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh with power harnessed through rice husk, the team behind the venture is now undertaking a similar task in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Beginning with Tamkuha in Bihar, the ‘Husk Power System' designed by NRI entrepreneur Gyanesh Pandey has gone on to dispel darkness in over 125 villages since 2007. “The conventional technologies and grids had...

The European Commission recommended sweeping new changes to the European Union’s policy on the cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on Tuesday, unveiling a proposal to grant individual member states the right to decide for themselves whether to allow their domestic farmers to grow the altered crops. “I think that this proposal reflects a balanced approach to a sensitive issue, in particular for European citizens,” European Health Commissioner John Dalli told...

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto turned classical capitalism on its head with his trickle-up theory: that if you create wealth at the bottom of the pyramid, it will find its way up. de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, speaks to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV’s Walk the Talk on the need for the poor to be able to participate in the global economy...

The Union budget estimates the nominal rate of growth for the Indian economy to be 12.5 per cent during the current fiscal. While it is impossible to figure out the manner in which this number was arrived at, the government has predicted further that the inflation-adjusted real growth rate for the same year will be eight per cent. Simple arithmetic requires that the difference between the nominal and real growth...