What is our national aim? To my mind, our national aim must be to make India a highly prosperous country for its citizens, and for that it is necessary to have a high degree of industrialization.  Even setting up and running a single primary school requires a lot of money, e.g. for buying land, erecting the school building and providing for the recurrent expenditure for salaries of teachers, staff, etc. We...

Those who see a direct link between wage inflation and the employment guarantee scheme need to think again Rural wage rates have been rising at quite a fast rate in recent months. Farmers have been complaining about their inability to get cheap labour for their farms. Industry, too, has raised the alarm saying that this is squeezing their margins; higher rural wages mean fewer people are willing to work on construction...

The Reserve Bank of India on Friday expressed the hope that foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail would help in bringing down inflation. “...Certainly it (FDI in multi-brand retail) would help improve supply chain and we hope it should also contribute to reducing inflation,” Reserve Bank of India Governor D. Subbarao told reporters on the sidelines of a memorial lecture here. Dr. Subbarao said 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail would...

-AP   As delegates gather in South Africa to plot the next big push against climate change, Western governments are saying it’s time to move beyond traditional distinctions between industrial and developing countries and get China and other growing economies to accept legally binding curbs on greenhouse gases. It will be a central theme for the 20,000 national officials, lobbyists, scientists and advocates gathering under U.N. auspices in the coastal city of Durban...

-The Hindu   ‘It has become imperative in view of climate change' Bio-fortified varieties of staple food grains, such as Vitamin-A-enriched ‘Golden Rice', or iron-enriched wheat, could improve the nutritional status of the world's poor, P. Pushpangadan, Director General, Amity Institute for Herbal and Biotech Products Development, said here on Thursday. Presenting a paper on the “Recent advances of agricultural biotechnology in the light of climate change” at the 81st annual session of the...