The approach paper for the 12th Five-Year Plan with focus on faster, sustained and inclusive growth is candid and forward-looking. On poverty reduction, the document notes, without comment, the annual trend decline of 0.8% accelerating to 1% during 2004-05 to 2009-10, against a promised target of 2% in the 11th Plan. It emphasises that India will easily meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving poverty by 2015, over 25...

The central government claims that allowing foreign direct investment into India’s retail sector will benefit small farmers, expand employment and lower food inflation. What has been the experience in India with organised retail so far and what has been the global experience with FDI? Sukhpal Singh (sukhpal@iegindia.org) is currently at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. After being under relentless attack for a week, the United Progressiv Alliance government was forced to...

Global experience in retail trading by MNCs does not tally with the presumptions on which the UPA government's FDI policy is based. IN the course of the debate on the need to permit foreign direct investment in retail in India, two arguments have been advanced often. The first argument is that large organised retail is good for not just consumers, who would benefit from lower prices owing to cost efficiencies...

Our democracy is creaking, but it works—nominally at least. What it needs is not dilution, but deepening. When “Too Much Democracy” Works     Pressure in Parliament pushes PM Manmohan Singh to secure the resignation of telecom minister A. Raja in the 2G affair     The angst and trials of tribals in the Maoist bastion of Dantewada is sensed in Delhi after the media highlights their plight     People power at the sites of...

-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...