-The Hindu Unsustainable import competition and the end of the investment subsidy that the sale of under-priced resources provided to Indian companies are the main reasons why the economy has slowed down What has been called the ‘golden age’ of India’s economic growth was underpinned by global integration, high rates of investment and savings growth and low current account deficits. The slowdown is characterised by a sharp deceleration in investment growth on...

Model community forestry initiatives in Orissa are defying Forest Department efforts to control and exploit the region’s forests. ‘Heaven is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees / And hell is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees with a forest guard in it!’ Thus goes a song of the Muria Adivasis in the forests of Bastar in central India. Encapsulated in this simple expression, however, is...

The NAC lies defanged; the markets leap for joy at Manmohan’s & Co’s charge of a ‘new’ economy How swiftly things change. Just a month ago, the great Indian growth story was being written off. Now, the “new economy”, run by the PM-cum-FM, will sift through the rubble of under-seven per cent growth, find the hidden springs of recovery and throw in some reforms for good measure. A top taxman says...

-The Indian Express   Time to take the bolder steps, bring FDI to small towns When the GDP falls below 7 per cent, we need to start worrying. When it is less than 6 per cent, we must treat it as a crisis situation. Growth models show that the robust investment rates already achieved, and twice the productivity growth achieved in the 1980s and ’90s, will get us 8 per cent growth. This...

-Down to Earth   Buy an Indian breed from Australia In June last year, we visited Malaysia on the invitation of the country’s oldest and most active consumer action group, The Consumer Association of Penang, to study the livestock production systems and to advise on how these can be transformed into more sustainable and less industrial farming systems. The past 40 years of aggressive industrial growth in Malaysia has seen small-scale peasant agriculture and...