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...

The Planning Commission drew flak when it calculated that if an urban person spent 28 per head every day and someone in rural areas spent 22, that was enough to consider them to be above the poverty line. These figures are based on consumption expenditure data collected in the 66th round of NSSO for 2009-10. From these new estimates, using the Tendulkar Committee methodology, the number of poor in 2009-10 was...

-PTI While petrol prices are market-linked, govt fixes LPG, kerosene and diesel rates, which results in huge expenditure on subsidies Making a case for raising prices of diesel, kerosene and LPG, the Reserve Bank today said hike in rates of petroleum products is necessary to arrest fiscal slippages. "Overall from the perspective of vulnerabilities emerging from the fiscal and current account deficits, it is imperative for macroeconomic stability that administered prices of petroleum...

-The Economic Times Repressed, unrevised retail prices by fiat have led to rising diesel consumption nationwide, thoroughly misallocating resources and recklessly fretting away scarce budgetary funds in the bargain. The government needs to promptly decontrol diesel prices and put paid to open-ended oil consumption subsidies, as it has rightly proposed to in the Union Budget.  Further dither and non-decision would wreak havoc in government finances and hook the fiscal deficit figure over...

It is worrying that the Tendulkar method, chosen by the Planning Commission to calculate the poverty line in its latest figures, underestimates the levels of poverty while overestimating poverty reduction. The figures show that 29.8% or 360 million Indians were poor in 2009-10 as compared to 37.2% or 400 million in 2004-05. A poor person has been defined as one who spends R28 per day in urban areas and R22.5...