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In a major move to attract foreign investment in the electronic commerce (e-commerce), India allowed 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the market place format of e-commerce retailing under the automatic route. The market place model is a legitimate channel of doing e-commerce, one that genuinely promotes the interests of both the consumers and producers to save on the huge cost of holding inventory and stocks. Marketplaces mainly act as a conduit connecting sellers and buyers. In a sector which has already witnessed over 10 billion dollars in investments and one on which the large swathe of people depend on their livelihood, the latest move has lent policy clarity and also how e-commerce would forge ahead by drawing the distinction between market place model and the inventory model.

India will be hosting the eighth summit of BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in Goa in October this year and as the Chairman of the BRICS group, the Indian Government has been entrusted with a major responsibility to contribute to the process of easing the global economic crisis by identifying the areas where immediate action is needed to correct the distortions. The five members of BRICS represent more than two-fifth of the world population and a combined GDP of over US$ 16 trillion. As a multilateral organization, BRICS has a crucial role to play in the global economy apart from expanding the scope of cooperation between the members of the grouping. India has to impart an innovative leadership to the BRICS summit this year by focusing on the issues which have been ailing the global economy due to the partisan policies of the rich nations led by the United States.

RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has predictably announced a 25 basis point cut in the key policy rate (repo), lowering it to 6.5 per cent, and has buttressed it with significant liquidity management measures designed to improve credit transmission by banks and “magnify the effects of the current policy rate cut”.

On April 1, Bihar joined the group of states practising complete or partial prohibition. On this date the state enforced partial prohibition particularly in the rural areas of the state. The partial ban would not cover the sale of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL), which would be available in 656 shops within urban limits, but not in rural areas, of the state’s 38 districts. In the first phase, the ban would become operative in the rural areas. This will affect the local brewers.

Once asked what qualities a politician required, Britain’s former Prime Minister Winston Churchill had said “The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen”.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind. So goes a biblical saying. That is exactly the fate which has fallen the Congress High Command in the sordid Congress candidate selection episode in Kerala.

The mood of Assam’s majority of 1.98 crore voters in the two phased assembly elections is increasingly turning in favour of a change. Nearly octogenarian Congress Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is up against a formidable BJP-led coalition that has two old hardcore rightist regional parties, though somewhat rival, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bodo People’s Front (BPF), as allies. Fifteen years of Congress rule in Assam has done little to develop the resources-rich important north-eastern state into an economic powerhouse that can assure stable jobs for the state’s growing number of educated youth. Assam, like six other neighbouring states in India’s remotest region, has remained neglected despite the existence of a lot of untapped economic resources and proximity to important developing countries in the east such as Myanmar, Bangladesh and those in the Indo-China region.

A recent poll survey appears to be right in its predictions about the winners in West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. But it is the losers who are also likely to attract considerable attention.

Entering its third fiscal year, the Modi Government has been at pains to demonstrate its undiminished reforming zeal and cataloguing a whole range of policy endeavours of last two years in several directions to lift up a still stagnant economy awaiting signals of revival at the start of the new fiscal year (2016-17).

The BJP should not follow the Congress path and, if it does, will also be doomed like the grand old party. Since the inauguration of the republic, central governments have misused Article 356 for partial advantage of the ruling party. However, under Indira Gandhi, the provision became an important tool to shape the political system to suit her agenda. The similarity between her and current regime should not be missed. Both brook no opposition, do not necessarily respect institutional propriety, and act, as if, they are here to stay forever.