-Outlook Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, has an outstanding loan of Rs 1.5 crore for purchase of a house in posh Greater Kailash locality here, according to an RTI reply. Ahluwalia, whose financial assets net of liabilities as of 31 March 2012 are Rs 3,85,82,450, has a loan of Rs 1.5 crore from Syndicate Bank for house purchase, the RTI reply says. Ahluwalia purchased the 500-square yards house at...
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Tapping the rural news space-Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty
-The Hindu Rural newspaper Gaon Connection, recently launched in Uttar Pradesh, seeks to project the hinterland as it really is For long the national media has been accused of shutting its door on rural news. And by now, the largely city-centric media has won the argument too that news about villages and small towns just do not bring them the advertisers. So we are in an age when the ‘business of media’...
More »Retail FDI: an imagined solution-VK Madhavan
-Live Mint FDI or not, there are problems that plague Indian agriculture and will need to be fixed first With the parliamentary vote on foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail out of the way, the government will proceed with the liberalization of this sector as it thinks it will improve the prospects of agriculture. Should we be worried about our small neighbourhood stores shutting down? The fears are overblown. Organized large-format retail...
More »India’s employment elasticity almost zero-Manas Chakravarty
-Live Mint High growth hasn’t led to more jobs The years between 2004-05 and 2009-10 saw some of the highest rates of gross domestic product (GDP) growth for India. The problem, however, is that this high growth hasn’t led to more jobs. Employment elasticity—which is a measure of how employment varies with economic output—has come down dramatically. The Planning Commission says that employment elasticity has come down “from 0.44 in the first half...
More »All to the sweat shop-Bhavdeep Kang
-Tehelka Here are the gaping holes in the argument for FDI in retail. No smooth talk can pave over it TOUTED AS a cure-all for India’s economic ills, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail is at best an anodyne, and at worst, toxic. It is an attempt to lift markets by fabricating sentiment; signalling an economic turnaround without any concrete steps being taken to trim the fiscal deficit or boost manufacturing. All...
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