By Barun Das Gupta KOLKATA: One of the first priorities of the NDA Government on coming to power was to address the task of speedily narrowing down the asymmetrical gap in India’s defence vis-à-vis China along the entire Himalayan border. In fact, this should have begun in right earnest more than half a century ago, immediately after India’s disastrous military defeat at the hands of the […]
MUMBAI: At one of the customary premonetary policy meetings with industry, former Reserve Bank of India governor Duvvuri Subbarao wanted to know how many of those present would benefit from an interest rate cut. Almost all hands went up. The next question was how many would pass on the lower cost to customers. Almost no one raised their hands. Subbarao kept interest rates unchanged. The voice of […]
NEW DELHI: India Friday called for building the SAARC power grid so that excess power produced in one region of South Asia can be used to meet deficits elsewhere. Addressing the fifth South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation energy ministers meet here, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said that with the implementation of such a grid, hydel power generated in India’s northeast, for instance, could be transported […]
New Delhi: Shortly after 10 am on Friday, while the prime minister was exhorting an annual meeting of top military commanders from the Army, Navy and Air Force to be ready for any call to arms, India’s newest missile blasted off from a canister at the Chandipur test range on the coast of Odisha. This was the Nirbhay long-range cruise missile, which can hit a target […]
David Wolf, a fund manager at Fidelity Investments in Toronto, says equity spasms such as those that shook global stocks this week scare professionals as much as everyone else. “My dad has been quite panicky,” Wolf said of his father, Bernard, a retired economics professor from Canada’s Schulich School of Business. “He knows what markets are all about and he knows what the economy is all about, […]
The morning after: dejected Yes supporters head home up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh After a lifetime in the business world, Lord Smith of Kelvin is bound to have come across his fair share of chancers. However, I do wonder if he realises what he has taken on in agreeing to hold the coats in the war between Scotland’s political parties over what “extensive” extra powers should […]
By Subrata Majumder Paradoxically, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi succeeded in persuading the Japanese and Chinese investors, he failed to influence the big American investors. Instead, his political wave and speech impelled the Indian Diaspora only. While a number of billion dollar projects were signed during his visit to Japan and the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India, no major deal was signed during his […]
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was a momentous occasion worthy of a celebration. And the Kerala Congress(Mani) did celebrate the fiftieth year of its formation in grand style. But the celebrations were marred by an acrimonious war of words and articles between the KC(M) and ‘big brother’ Congress, allies in the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) in the State. The proximate cause for the […]
NEW DELHI: Having proved himself as a ‘rock star’ abroad and a vote-getting machine at home, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now going to do what people are telling him to do: Take policy decisions that cannot be put off any longer. The first of these is a Cabinet reshuffle likely by the end of this month – after Diwali. A brace of decisions on economic […]
Hyderabad: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan has said the central bank is in talks with the Centre to set up a financial resolution authority (FRA). “We really need a financial resolution authority so that we can close financial institutions in trouble, without necessarily merging those and taking the losses. We need to clean institutions…while resurrecting those functioning well. FRA will be the entity that […]
New Delhi: Oil companies’ gains on diesel sales jumped 87 per cent within a fortnight on a historic slide in global crude prices. Their profits from diesel, recorded for the first time ever, continue as the government delays a decision on deregulating its price. “The over-recovery on high-speed diesel (HSD), applicable for the second fortnight effective October 16, is now Rs 3.56 per litre. The over-recovery […]
NEW DELHI: DRDO is developing an air-launched version of the 1,500-km-range Nirbhay sub-sonic cruise missile which would be capable of being fired from the Air Force’s frontline Su-30MKI combat aircraft. “This Nirbhay missile would be capable of being used from air, land and ships and submarines. An air-launched version of the missile is also being planned,” DRDO chief Avinash Chander told PTI here. He said […]
An advertisement by the highway outside Dubai’s massive Jebel Ali Port tells firms they don’t need to ship goods through the Strait of Hormuz, the traditional gateway to the Gulf. Instead they can have goods delivered to a port in Oman, outside the Gulf, and bring them into the region by road. “Why go through the Strait when you can go straight to the Gulf,” the billboard […]
NEW DELHI: The telecom regulator has proposed to set the base price of 1800 MHz band in the upcoming spectrum auctions at 10% more than the previous round, a recommendation that operators and analysts say is likely to hurt an industry that is laden with debt and facing an uncertain business environment. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has suggested Rs 2,138 crore as the […]
By Nantoo Banerjee Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Defence Minister Arun Jaitley may not be fully aware how the United States made India play a pawn under the UPA’s 10-year-long Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh regime in America’s psychological war against the People’s Republic of China, trying to contain the latter’s geo-political ambition and keep control of the vital South China Sea that handles $5.5-trillion-worth global cargo movement […]
By Ashok B Sharma Recent unprovoked firing by Pakistan at the Line of Control and as well as at the international border shows the utter helplessness and desperation on its part. India has suspended the dialogue process as Pakistan opted to talk to Kashmiri separatists which the former said was against the spirit of the Shimla Agreement and Lahore Declaration. Subsequently, Pakistan resorted to unprovoked firing at […]
Still haunted by its failed attempt to prevent a steep drop in oil prices by slashing production by almost three quarters in the 1980s, the world’s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia is determined not to make the same mistake again. The oil glut of the 1980s, the early days of the modern crude market and a distant memory for most traders, has resurfaced recently in conversations with […]
By S. Sethuraman A global economy, wobbling six years after the financial market crash of 2008, cannot need anything better than a firm commitment of the world’s financiers to build a more robust, sustainable, balanced, job-rich economic order. Global unemployment is at its all-time peak, especially in Europe and large parts of developing world. Finance Ministers of 188 nations met at the 2014 Annual Meetings […]
From L.S. Herdenia BHOPAL: The three day Global Investors meet concluded last week with the promise of investment to the tune of Rs. 6.89 lakh crores in Madhya Pradesh. Addressing media after the conclusion of the fourth such summit, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan said that the government has received 3,165 investment proposals worth Rs. 4.36 lakh crore from investors who registered on the official website. […]
From Pradeep Kapoor LUCKNOW: Bahujan Samaj Party supremo. Mayawati is unnerved at the prospects of her party at the next assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh scheduled in May 2017. After the BSP’s disastrous results at the Lok Sabha elections in May this year, the BSP chief made another mistake by not fielding party candidates in the by elections to the state assembly in September this year. […]
By Ashok B Sharma India’s foreign trade has badly suffered since the beginning of the global financial crisis in August-September 2008 and the subsequent shock of the sovereign crisis in Eurozone added to the problem. Over dependence on markets in the developed countries was the cause for shrinkage in Indian exports. As the recovery in developed countries and increase in demand is slow, India should […]
By Ashis Biswas KOLKATA: There are no two opinions about it: unless the Indian government cracks down hard on the unholy nexus between the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bangladeshi Jamat-e-Islami, India’s regional foreign policy objectives will be seriously compromised. The recent accidental explosion at a house in Khagraghar, Burdwan town, where Muslim extremists with Bangladeshi links had set up an explosive manufacturing centre and […]
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The crisis plaguing the Congress in Kerala over the Shashi Tharoor issue has deepened with the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee, demanding in an un precedented move, ‘appropriate action’ against the high-profile MP from Thiruvananthapuram, for his frequent praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Although the KPCC report has demanded appropriate action against Tharoor, it has not specified the kind of action it […]
By Kalyani Shankar Will the ensuing Assembly polls to Haryana and Maharashtra be seen as a referendum on the new Modi government? No doubt stakes are high for both Prime Minister Narendra Modi who feels on the top of the world after his landslide victory and congress President Sonia Gandhi, who is suffering from the most humiliating defeat in the recent Lok Sabha polls. It is […]
