Technically, we know how to check the black economy but the problem is political. More studies or committees and treaties with foreign governments are only to stall action. Another Joint Parliamentary Committee has been announced. The government has been trying to create an impression of being proactive with regard to tackling the black economy. The President's address and the speech by Sonia Gandhi in January mentioned the need to curb it....

Cash transfers, the latest global development fashion, involve several risks in India, not least the risk of forgetting the need for continuing structural change. WHEN I was growing up, several decades ago, middle-class society in India was always a little delayed in catching on to Western fashions whether in music or dress or in other aspects. The past decades of globalisation seemed to have changed all that. Modern communications technology...

India may have to abide by a series of international standards and regulatory practices in the healthcare sector, if it agrees to some proposals that are part of the ongoing India–EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. For instance, EU negotiators have sought India’s commitment to adopting Global Harmonization Task Force (GHTF) norms for medical devices. The move comes at a time when India and other Asian countries are trying to formulate...

Government today decided to lift ban on exports of onion, following farmers' protest over crash in domestic prices within two months of touching Rs 80 a kg. The decision to this effect was taken at the meeting of the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) on food, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. But, as a precautionary measure against possibility of prices shooting again, the EGoM decided to allow shipments of onions at...

The 50-year-old farmer knew from experience that his onion crop was doomed when torrential rains pounded his fields throughout September, a month when the Indian monsoon normally peters out. For lack of modern agricultural systems in this part of rural India, his land does not have adequate drainage trenches, and he has no safe, dry place to store onions. The farmer, Arun Namder Talele, said he lost 70 percent of...