View Articles

India is in a sweet spot as global economy is not looking good in the face of market turmoil in China. A global recession triggered by poor showing of European economy had hit badly the export led growth model of China, whose economy grew by 6.9 per cent in 2015, the slowest in two decades. Following this slowdown, high commodity prices had started correcting exerting more pressure on China down turn. The massive over investment in China in steel, cement, shipbuilding, petrochemicals, real estate and other infrastructure sectors began to burst. This volatility in equity and commodity markets did not augur well for the global and Chinese economies. Global economy may not be in a crisis as in 2008 during the financial meltdown but it is certainly not out of the woods and outlook for global economy is certainly bearish in 2016.

On 16th January, with much fanfare, the Union government announced its “Start-up India” scheme. On attendance were big people, big enough not to deserve any income tax break in their next seven lives. But this is precisely what the Government of India (GoI) has offered – an income tax exemption for first three years of a “start-up”. There will also be tax exemption on capital gains. After all its fake environment-love recently in Paris, this GoI scheme has also offered a three-year exemption on environment law compliance! Entities will only need to self-certify! In the name of “start-up”, exactly what anti-environment, anti-labour racket are we starting up here? This will also be true for labour law and working condition compliance (including payment of wages and benefits to staff). Shamelessly, this whole scheme is being sold to the people as an employment generation scheme. What kind of pro-employment scheme waives off inspection of labour conditions? What kind of pro-employment scheme benefits from a waiver of external public scrutiny of employee rights violations? A scheme that promotes and employee-rights violation for three years and then makes shirking responsibility of ruin easy by special quick-exit insolvency and bankruptcy laws (helping “start up” to “close down” in 90 days) is being termed as transformative. We live in sad, rudderless, cruel times.

While investors and business circles grumble over the tardy pace of growth in Indo-China bilateral trade through the Nathu La Himalayan outpost, Beijing is apparently not too keen to launch any export promotion initiative just yet. In the context of India’s large trade deficit vis-à-vis China, the reverse trend at Nathu La, where China imports far more from India than it exports, strikes most observers as an oddity.

For the United Nations (UN), 2015 marked a watershed in its long career in the worthy cause of development cooperation as it hosted two significant meetings in the latter half to secure balanced growth of all. In September, world leaders adopted a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, close on the heels of their pact in July on a new financing framework for achieving sustainable development, embodied in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA). Towards the close of 2015, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) held in Paris, more than 192 countries signaled an end to the fossil fuel era, committing to emitting reduced greenhouse gas in a universal agreement for the first time eve in order to stave off the ravaging repercussions of climate change. Both the epochal events indubitably invest humanity with a ray of hope for a better tomorrow and to equally better days for the posterity to whom the current generation owes an implicit obligation.

Just a day after the emphatic declaration of the chief minister, Nitish Kumar, “The rule of law prevails in Bihar and will prevail in the future,' a jeweler was shot dead in broad daylight in Patna for refusing to pay extortion money to a criminal gang.

KOLKATA: Diplomacy may have won the day for Russia more than financial/technological reasons, in bagging the order to build two nuclear power generating stations in Bangladesh by 2022-23.

Malevolent stars have sharpened their gaze at the Modi government and the BJP. Achche Din prime minister had promised on assuming office 20 months ago have already turned into Bure Din for the country’s economy. The ruling BJP has also not remained unaffected by the Bure Din as its political and electoral fortunes have been on the downslide.

The Prime Minister is driving the country towards a rapid economic development but the major roadblock in his path is the nature of political, economic and social institutions. He would need to change the despotic political structure; all entries banned kind of economic institutions; and the archaic social structures.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two down. How many more? This is the question resonating in the power corridors of Kerala after the resignation of Excise Minister, K. Babu, in the infamous bar bribery scandal. The first casualty was Finance Minister K M Mani who exited only after much persuasion and virtual ultimatums.

Swiss banks may not be too happy with India’s latest round of searches for big Indian accounts there. But, largely impoverished India’s endless gold hunt, especially at a time when the global economy and trade are shrinking and stock markets around the world are going topsy-turvy following economic slow-down in China, has placed the Geneva-based World Gold Council on top of the world. India’s gold import last month hit a new 120-day high at nearly $4 billion while all other imports to the country shrank by over 15 per cent in value. The massive gold import by bullion merchants, mostly from Mumbai and Ahmedabad, widened the country’s trade deficit to $11.7 billion in just one month. In the pre-reform period, India’s annual trade deficit rarely topped $5 billion. During the current financial year 2015-16, the total gold import bill alone may come close to India’s total crude oil import cost. The gold import may suck up close to $50 billion, if not more, from the Reserve Bank of India’s modest foreign exchange reserves this year even as the Indian currency is set fall further to Rs 70 for a US Dollar, this year.