Change is the great constant of the world economy. India was still a colony when the allied powers shaped the international architecture at the end of World War Two. Today, India is a rising economic power that is contributing to world growth in new and powerful ways. Economic reforms in India and China, and the export-driven growth strategies of East Asia all contributed in the last 20 years to a world...

The former finance secretary and former Indian ambassador to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), S.P. Shukla, has demanded that the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act be repealed. Mr. Shukla was speaking at a national convention against SEZs organised at Gorai village on the outskirts of Mumbai on November 25 and 26. came together to resist the anti-people model of development that SEZs represented. Farmers, fishermen, labourers, activists, artists,...

The Indian economy is picking up and should be able to expand at eight to nine per cent. It is high time that the government initiates a universal public distribution system covering at least the essential commodities. Incomes of the rich will go up and India will be a major player in the world when it revives. But the bulk of the population, about 70 per cent, will remain poor with...

Making a virtue out of the inevitable would appear to be the way forward in climate change negotiations. After the US agreed to reduce aggregate emissions 17% over 2005 levels by 2025, and China agreed to reduce the carbon intensity of its growth (emissions per unit of output) by 40% on a voluntary basis, there is pressure on India to place its own emission reduction targets. India should oblige. It...

India should insist that developed nations take the lead with substantial emission reductions, in line with the IPCC recommendations. Any non-binding agreement committing all nations without distinction should be rejected.  It is a measure of the current state of global climate negotiations that the only point on which all nations are likely to agree is that the prospects of an agreement at Copenhagen are far from bright. The moral and...