Only a process of reverse migration based on the Gandhian model can save India’s cities, and also rural India.  A report prepared by the United Nations Development Programme reveals that in India’s big cities more than 40 per cent of the people live in slums. Some of them have reasonable levels of income, but cannot afford other housing. For many reasons including the population load, slums are unhygienic. It is...

As an Indian, and one who has held high ministerial office, it is only right that I begin by portraying the reality of my own country before drawing comparisons with my South Asian neighbours. The World Food Programme tells us that half the world’s hungry live in India. Which is the more significant reality: Our being the second-fastest growing economy in the world, or that, notwithstanding that extraordinarily high growth...

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia today said the food price inflation would come down by the end of the current fiscal. "Food price inflation by the end of the current fiscal would be significantly lower than what it is right now," Ahluwalia said while speaking at the India Economic Summit here. Citing the reason for high food inflation, he said, at the end of a bad monsoon, particularly...

The fates of Delhi government's favourite project, Signature Bridge, and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation’s (DMRC) Central Secretariat to Badarpur line have become intertwined. The government is now planning to move the Central Vigilance Commission to seek permission to give the project to the second lowest bidder. The move is prompted by the decision of the DMRC to examine whether or not to blacklist Gammon India Private Limited after the...

When the Indian government met the largest economic crisis the world has faced in nearly 80 years with tax cuts, aid for rural workers and interest rate cuts, critics said it was not enough. Now, though, it looks as if the policy makers may have offered too much. India’s $1 trillion economy, largely insulated from the global crisis by low reliance on exports and a heavily regulated banking system, has exceeded expectations...