July 2009

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s Budget for 2009-10 seems to have received mixed responses. It is clear that the corporate sector is not very pleased with it. We are also told that it has nothing for the urban sector, and that it is too heavily biased towards the rural populace. It is also true that the Budget leaves too big a resource gap, with the fiscal deficit figure being 6.8 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP), which is more than double of the earlier fixed Fiscal (…)

Undoubtedly, the Union Budget 2009-10, presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to the Lok Sabha on July 6, has disappointed certain sections here and abroad that had been expecting India to go in for the Washington Consensus-based economic reforms in full swing. They had based their expectations largely on the assumption that the Left had been the only impediment in their way all these years. With Left not only distancing itself from the Congress-led UPA but also having suffered big (…)

One followed by seven zeroes, a crore, is easy to conceptualise. It’s the unit in which politicians count their money. But one followed by twelve zeroes? It takes an Indian Budget to think in those terms—Rs 1417030000000 being the allocation for defence in the Mukherjee Budget. It’s 34 per cent higher than last year’s but it’s for our defence, so no one will grudge it.
That’s a pity because we must indeed grudge it. And precisely because it is for defence. Not that the money is too (…)

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has relied on increase in fiscal deficit to break the recession. The fiscal deficit was about 3 per cent of our national income two years ago. It increased to 6.2 per cent in the last year, 2008-09. Now Pranab Mukherjee has proposed to increase it to 6.8 per cent for the coming year.
Expenditures in excess of income of the government are called fiscal deficit. The government has the authority to print notes or borrow from the public or foreign (…)

In recent years most reports about handloom weavers have spoken of decline and decay, debts and distress. Yet it is possible to envisage steps and solutions which can not only protect lakhs of skilled livelihoods in handlooms and khadi, in addition it should be possible to create lakhs of new livelihoods—full-time and part-time—in this sector.
Handloom cloth is cloth woven by hand, or cloth woven on manually operated looms (as distinct from electricity operated looms or powerlooms). (…)

The present Pope Benedict XVI has released his recent Encyclical letter on July 7, 2009 to express his opinions and also showing his frustration on the present-day capitalism. He also has spelled out his vision of a new economic model for the inclusive economic growth of mankind. He has timed it such that the G-8 bosses get the right message while debating over the present economic meltdown across the world. The G-8 meeting took place just three days ahead of his meeting with the President (…)

Thoughts are expressed from time to time regarding various facets and issues relating to higher education in India. Not all of them are necessarily consistent with each other. They are even mutually contradictory and can prove misleading as well. The Knowledge Commission was expected to give a sense of direction. But it itself proved to be a a divided house. Its Vice-Chairman and some members resigned. It faced the opposition of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. Now a new Minister (…)

The accident that took place at a major Metro construction site in the Capital in the wee hours of July 12 with the collapse of a pillar killing six people was indeed horrific. But that it was followed by the toppling of three cranes and a launching girder at the same construction site on July 13 injuring several persons even before the debris from the first incident could be removed has only aggravated public fears on the maintenance of safety norms during such construction work.
In (…)

COMMUNICATION
Death penulty is both cruel and irreversible. There are rare instances in which irrefutable proof of a man‘s innocence appeared long after his execution. Instances of execution after travesty of trial are galore. In the year one of President Obama, let us recollect that there was a time in the United States when the accusation of molestation or rape by a White woman against a Black man would inexorably lead to a death sentence, proof or no proof. (The reader will be well (…)

Strategic triads, quads and a plethora of new global groupings have steadily gained ground in the past few years. Call them strategic alliances or simply bargaining chips, the mushrooming new formations of the 21st century are like a kaleidoscope. You touch it and it changes shape and colour. The G-8 has practically become the G-20. On the other hand, given the dramatic rise of China and the global financial crisis, some would argue that for now only the G-2 (US and China) matters. Now the (…)