The rapid growth of emerging economies has led to a shift in economic power: forecasts based on analysis by late economist Angus Maddison suggest that the aggregate economic weight of developing and emerging economies is about to surpass that of the countries that currently make up the advanced world. According to Perspectives on Global Development: Shifting Wealth, a new publication from the OECD Development Centre, the economic and financial crisis is...

State governments will soon have a greater say in the stand the central government takes on key issues in the ongoing talks for opening up goods and services market in global trade at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The commerce department will hold regular consultations with state government officials on delicate issues such as safeguards to protect agriculture against indiscriminate imports and shielding sensitive industrial-goods sectors from competition, a commerce...

India has opposed suggestions that countries that have cap-and-trade schemes to control carbon emissions—mostly developed countries—impose a carbon tax on imports from nations that don’t have such measures in place, made at the ongoing global climate talks in Bonn. “The matter of any unilateral trade measure on imports in the name of climate action raises some concerns regarding the success of our discussions,” Vijay Sharma, secretary, ministry of environment and forests,...

The Indian Electricity Act, 2003, initially envisaged that the appropriate governments shall endeavour to supply electricity to all areas including villages and hamlets (Section 6), thus placing the responsibility for ensuring rural electricity supply on state governments. The UPA-I government amended this section to read as follows after detailed deliberations internally and with opposition parties: the concerned state government and the central government shall jointly endeavour to provide access to...

A meticulously researched book by A. Vaidyanathan, Agricultural Growth in India: Role of Technology, Incentives and Institutions, is an illuminating scholarly work. Thinking about it one realizes the dismal and declining state of Indian agriculture and the poor governance at both Central and state government levels that has brought it to this sorry pass. A valuable compendium of data and analysis of Indian agriculture since Independence, it is a valuable...