View Articles

It is essential to step back a little to examine, understand and evaluate what is happening around the world of currency. At the end of the current month, the International Monetary Fund will take a call on inclusion of China’s currency, the remenbi or in short yuan, in its SDR (Special Drawing Rights) basket. Earlier in 2010, the IMF had summarily rejected China’s bid to get yuan in the SDR.

In the Winter Session of parliament next week, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his managers would certainly attempt to push hard the pending economic reform measures though they also know the little chance of their success. They will be facing the determined opposition buoyed with the political advantage they got from the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Bihar elections. The opponents would not relent regardless of its consequence to national economy and its pace of growth.
The finance minister Arun Jaitley would be wasting his time in convincing the Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on the imperative need to rationalize the state tax structure for goods and services to a uniform pattern.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces a plethora of challenges when he returns from his foreign trip at the end of the week. The immediate impact of the Grand Alliance’s massive Bihar victory this month will be felt in the ensuing winter session of Parliament, as an emboldened combined opposition is likely to make it a washout. A win for the NDA could have given the Modi government the much-needed political authority to push its long-pending reform bills but the poll results have given the opposition an advantage.

The BJP high command might have singled out Shatrughan Sinha for accusing Narendra Modi and Amit Shah responsible for electoral debacle of the party in Bihar election, but the fact is he is not lone campaigner against the leadership.

Decks have been cleared for the much touted and long awaited TAPI gas pipeline project that would bring gas from Turkmenistan to India and Pakistan. The ambitious $10 billion project, which has had a checkered past, has gained momentum particularly after the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Turkmenistan in July and more recently in October by External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to work out the nitty-gritty of the project.

BHOPAL: Bihar defeat and Petlavad explosion may influence the outcome of the Jhabua-Ratlam parliamentary seat by-election where voting is scheduled to take place on November 21, 2015. The Jhabua-Ratlam seat became vacant following the demise of Dilip Singh Bhuria who won the seat in 2014. Dilip Singh Bhuria contested the election as a BJP candidate. NirmalaBhuria daughter of late Dilip Singh Bhuria is contesting as BJP candidate.

Five States are scheduled to hold assembly elections next year: Kerala, Puducherry, Assam, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Except Assam, none of the other States holds much prospect for the BJP. It is only Assam, the party was setting store by. But several developments in the recent past, the latest being the party’s debacle in Bihar, seem to be putting paid to its hopes about Assam where elections will be held in May.

Can the resurgence of Sikh radicals who exploited the emotional upheaval among the Sikhs over the incidents of defiling of Guru Granth Sahib create the 1980s-like situation when Punjab was virtually taken over by the ISI-backed militants? Two, has the chain of recent events given impetus to the already escalating anti-incumbency against the Badals-led state’s Akali-BJP government? While answer of the first question is ‘NO’, that of the second is ‘YES’.

The 130-year-old Congress is behaving like 44-year-old, yet-to-grow-up Rahul Gandhi. The party’s churlish response to the Narendra Modi government’s decision to open up more sectors to foreign investment shows that it is far from shedding its cussed attitude which it displayed while scuppering the amendment to the land acquisition bill and threatening to do the same to the proposed legislation on goods and services.

India without the public sector SAIL, BHEL, GAIL, CIL, NPCL, PGCL, NTPC, ONGC, IOC, NHPC, NMDC, HAL and HSL among other 200-odd PSEs is worth almost nothing. They have literally built today’s India, supporting the growth of most other private enterprises barring a few world-class independent entrepreneur groups, companies and sectors such as the House of Tatas, Reliance Industries, Aditya Birla group, M&M, L&T, Hero MotoCorps, Bajaj Auto, Infosys and pharma biggies. Most of India’s PSEs contributed substantially to the grow of the Banking industry, which is also controlled by public sector banks with two principal exceptions – ICICI and HDFC Bank. The contribution of the country’s public sector enterprises and banks to the making of its $2-trillion GDP is enormous as also overwhelming. It may be time to reinvestment and rebuild the public sector and convert immovable assets of sick public sectors into modern and profitable PSEs. All major economies, barring the capitalist US, Japan and Germany and a few others, are propped up by their state-invested, though not always state controlled, enterprises. The poor growth of India’s industrial sector in recent years is linked with the growth constraints in its public sector.