-The Telegraph The troubles of the tanning industry are many. From Kanpur to Calcutta, it has turned into one big leather-hunt In May 2018, the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government announced that tanneries in Jajmau in Kanpur would close down for three months between December and March during the Kumbh Mela. Reason: to keep the river waters clean during the Hindu festival wherein millions of pilgrims take a dip at the confluence of...

-The Indian Express The certainty that producers once enjoyed — of finding buyers for their wares without doing much beyond minor price adjustments to bring supply and demand into equilibrium — has ceased to exist. India traditionally never had a demand problem. On the contrary, its economy was always supply-constrained. Proof of no demand paucity is that between 2000-01 and 2015-16, domestic consumption of both finished steel and cement roughly trebled, from...

-The Financial Express When several NGOs and others protested against the GEAC report, the UPA's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh decided not to give the final go-ahead. As farmers under the umbrella of the Shetkari Sangathana start their civil disobedience movement and plant the banned Herbicide Tolerant (HT) GM seeds as well as Bt brinjal, chances are the authorities will treat this as yet another law and order issue and will arrest them;...

-The Hindu Narendra Modi must leverage the public trust voters have placed in him to get the economy on track Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election campaign, staying clear of bread-and-butter issues, successfully swayed voter attention away from economic hardships. Having won a thumping mandate, his government in its second tenure must now devote itself to a well-thought-out strategy for economic reforms. The bad news Official estimates released on Friday, the new government’s first day...

-The Hindu Business Line As the sector pays the price for governments’ populism, it is time for an all new approach Earlier this month, Australia and Brazil dragged India to the WTO for its market-distorting policies on sugar. Their contention was that the subsidies, including the extent of farmer assistance, far exceeded the norms set by the WTO resulting in higher sugar production/exports which dampen the international prices and, consequently, hurt their...