There is a China hand in India's inflation, one important reason why the steady rise in interest rates may not be cooling the high inflation. About 25% of imported inputs that go into manufacture of goods produced locally are imported from China. In addition, a third of consumer goods imported into India come from China. The inflation in goods exported by China was 10% in July, much higher than its overall...

When activists of the Right to Food campaign attacked Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia over the Rs 32 per capita per day cut-off for poverty line, Vijay Jawandhia — a farm activist from Vidarbha — asked a counter question: “Why are you happy with a minimum wage of Rs 100 per labourer per day under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), when salaries have been revised several...

In planning, pursuit of profit was not seen as being in the social interest in the post-Independence years, but now profit is the sole motive. FOR two decades now the Government of India has pursued a policy of accelerated liberalisation, dismantling controls, diluting regulations and making the state a facilitator of private investment. It is not that the presence of the state has diminished during this period, but that its role...

Planning Commission’s affidavit to the Supreme Court states that adjusting for inflation, the poverty line for an urban person is Rs 32.5 per day per person and for a rural person it is Rs 29.3 per day per person. This has raised an outcry in media and the urban middle class, who consider them outrageously low. Based on these poverty lines, Planning Commission estimates that there are 40.74 crore persons...

The acronym LPG has several expansions. It stands for liquefied petroleum gas. It stands for liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, a term of abuse used by those with Leftwing persuasions. It stands for life plundered by the government, sentiments associated with those who are against state intervention, but increasingly felt by the so-called middle class - however defined - because of price hikes, and proposed price hikes, for petroleum products. Ostensibly, price...