-The Business Standard   Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee explained the government’s helplessness over inflation in the Rajya Sabha with great eloquence on Thursday. Much of what he said may have solid economic fundamentals, but the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government cannot claim helplessness forever — not when the signs of the cracks it is creating in India’s rural prosperity are becoming so obvious. If any one thing that has protected the Indian...

In the first high-level red-flag against the UPA government’s flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that while assets created under the NREGA “may or may not have productive use”, the programme was “adversely” impacting the agriculture sector by “drawing out agriculture labourers from agricultural operations”.   In a letter sent to the prime minister late last month, Pawar is...

Some time ago, newspapers in Britain carried full-page advertisements from the curiously named British Pig Association. This consortium of pig farmers was clamouring publicly that the supermarket chains were squeezing the farmers dry. Alongside them, Britain’s dairy farmers complained that a supermarket cartel was paring down their prices, while production costs went up and up. These farmers too have powerful lobbies; they are still in business. To this end, Britain, like...

U.P.'s GDP grew at 7.28 per cent in the past five years, but the State ranks low in virtually every area of socio-economic development. IF statistics on gross domestic product (GDP) are the only criteria to evaluate the performance of a government, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government in Uttar Pradesh will have to be rated as one with highly impressive credentials. For, India's most populous State has recorded a...

The FDI in retail debate has apparently fully traversed the realm of reason and for it seems to have degenerated into name-calling. I had intimation of this when a diplomat who meets me from time to time asked me if I was being put up, for a price, by Indian corporate interests to stymie the entry of the big western firms like Wal-Mart and Carrefour? I can well imagine the...