2014

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech has said that his government was raising the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) cap in Defence from 26 per cent to 49 per cent. (He is also the Defence Minister.) Worrying as this piece of information is, what is more worrying is that he has not indicated which specific sectors in defence production will be thrown open to FDI and Foreign Technological Participation (FTP). The people have a right to know where exactly foreign manufacturers (…)

Do the slew of Budget proposals tell a coherent story with its main characters and their roles defining their relativities vis-à-vis each other and in the process unravel the overall plot and the moral of the story? With an over-advertised play, the compulsion to satisfy everyone in the audience is surely pressing but the Drama Company, the actors, the story-writers, the financiers and so on, that is, each constituency, may tend to lend their hand in the actual performance. So the remaining (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Impassioned election speeches of Narendra Modi to create a Congress-Mukt Bharat (an India Free of the Congress) was not aimed only at changing the political system and power structure of the country, it also aimed to exhort the people, the policy-makers, the bureaucrats to move away from the Nehruvian model of politics and economic practices. Modi politically succeeded in liberating the country of the Congress, but the presentation of the first Budget of the Modi (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
It’s like a political rope trick, Chidambaram’s maiden Budget as the Finance Minister of the United Front Government. Everyone from V.P. Singh and Somnath Chatterjee to the captains of the corporate giants have praised it and the Finance Minister coiuld go home in peace, as he has been anointed by the media as “Thiruvallu-var’s Disciple”. Indeed a long way that the young politician has travelled from the day when he promptly quit as the Commerce Minister to avoid being (…)

If the first 50-odd day of rule by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is any guide, it is a Rightist Government which has taken over India. The Nehruvian ideology which tilts towards the Left has been jettisoned. Once again, free enterprise and unencumbered trade will motivate the people.
This is a turnaround from the policies that has guided the nation so far. The public sector will shrink and the rich will expand their area of influence and operation. This is the logical consequence of a free (…)

It is a marvel of nature that worthwhile people may be found in the most unlikely places.
Take Mr Jaitley; civilised in demeanour, a sophisticated listener, quick on the uptake and sharp in repartee, adroit deployer of the well-timed witticism, unimpressed by raucous cheerleaders even if on his own side of the aisle, and, party Whip forbid, equipped to recognise merit on the other side, however reluctantly.
Yet, alas, the travails of office and the mauling oppression of dry-as-dust. A (…)

The following is a sequel to the author’s article on the Left-liberals’ approach to Moditva in the post-election scenario.
by Biswajit Roy
In a month after Narendra Modi’s advent to the South Block with Modified BJP gaining brute majority in Parliament, India has witnessed the gruesome killing of Mohsin Sadiq Shaikh by the Hindu Rashtra Sena in Pune, HRS-VHP attacks on Muslims in the region as well as the hounding of Modi’s social media critics by the police, in addition to increasing (…)

by Naresh Nadeem
It was a long time back when Pope Gregory VII compelled the German king, Henry IV (1050-1106), who acceded to the throne in 1084, to walk barefoot all the way from his kingdom to Canossa in snow and stand in waiting for three days outside the Pope’s grand mansion for an interview with him. This was even though King Henry III, the father of Henry IV, had played a key role in the accession of Hildebrand to the papal seat as Gregory VII.
This was what went in history as the (…)

The latest Citizens’ Report on Governance and Development prepared by the National Social Watch has drawn attention to several disturbing trends. The findings of this report are supported by a wealth of facts and figures.
Parliament
To start with, this report informs us—The nine sessions of Parliament during 2010-12 saw the Lok Sabha working for an average of less than four hours of work per day during its 227 sittings in 852 hours, that is, less than two-thirds of the scheduled six (…)

The Ukrainian Government has been contin-uing punitive military operations in the rebellious south-east of the country for more than two months, and did not go for extending the ceasefire date in spite of the call by leaders of Germany, France and Russia. The initial talks in participation with former Ukrainian Presi-dent Leonid Kuchma, representing official Kiev, and well-known Ukrainian public figure Victor Medvedchuk, the leader of the “Ukrainian Choice“, representing the rebel side, were (…)