-The Telegraph The Centre has renewed efforts to forge a consensus on allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail by writing to all chief ministers, seeking to drive home the urgency against the backdrop of grim economic data. “Letters have been written to all chief ministers to build consensus to open up the multi-brand retail sector to FDI,” a commerce ministry official said. The statement came a day after the country posted its...

Having watched from the ringside for many years now, I have no doubt in advising that the steering wheel must be firmly grasped by the government and direction given to policies that should be stable for at least the medium term. This is crucial for the growth of Indian pharma, a $20-billion industry growing at an average of 12% considering both domestic and export arenas. Price control: The biggest and most...

Last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh exhorted the bureaucracy to be fearless, saying, "Civil servants should fight the tendency of not taking decisions because of the fear that things might go wrong and they might be penalized for that." The PM was just the latest to express concern about increasing bureaucratic stasis-foreign visitors have remarked upon it and even TOI has written about it earlier. But his words have clearly failed...

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...

-PTI Five American trade bodies, including USIBC, have joined hands to oppose efforts of the Indian government to further restrict participation of foreign companies in India's tobacco market. According to reports, the India's Commerce Ministry, on the request of Health Ministry, has proposed to put a complete FDI ban in the sector. Currently, foreign direct investment (FDI) is completely prohibited in manufacturing of tobacco and its substitutes, while such investments are allowed up...