Opinions and Editorials

On Friday, wholesale sugar prices in Kolhapur—one of the biggest trading centres in India—touched Rs 34.43 per kg, a jump of almost 2% in a single day.

Of all the innovations that have shaped our lives in recent years, none has been more influential than the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

It seems the stress of fiscal profligacy has finally pushed the UPA into unveiling an ambitious plan for divesting government stakes in PSUs.

As of now, foreign airlines are barred from holding direct or indirect stakes in domestic carriers. On November 17, however, a committee of secretaries—set up to consider FDI in sensitive sectors—will discuss a proposal to allow foreign airlines to take up to 49% equity in Indian carriers. Such a decision could breathe life into the loss-ridden aviation industry.

Minister Kamal Nath is a go-getter. He has been putting much-needed energies into the road transport and highways sector, which fell into an unforgivable rut over the past few years. At a recent interaction—the Idea Exchange—with The Express Group journalists, he said he would build more roads in a year than were built over five years of the NDA's tenure.

Two new corruption cases from Jharkhand exemplify how India's mineral riches are being mishandled even as their demand—both global and domestic—is booming.

RBI has now made it amply clear that it is more worried about inflation than growth in the months ahead.

Compared with almost any other industry in India, banking is ridden with anti-competitive policy. It is essentially impossible to start a new bank, foreign banks are prohibited from competing in India, and existing banks have to take permissions to open branches.

If any evidence was ever needed to substantiate the claim that we are still at a very nascent stage of recovery, one needn't go any further than examining the latest core sector data.

What distinguishes the latest chapter in India's volatile land narrative is that it stars the Army. As The Indian Express has been reporting, senior officers appear to be involved in a fraudulent scheme to transfer land in Sukna to a sham educational society. The concerned land is located in the Himalayan foothills in Darjeeling, West Bengal.

Exactly 40 years ago, the first message on what we call the Internet today was transmitted. That transmission, brief as it was, wasn't completed before the system—linking together machines at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute crashed. Only the 'lo' part of the 'log in' went through. Poetic prescience you could argue, given that synecdoche is so triumphant in our times.

Way back in 1999, when the prototype of an indigenous anti-collision device (ACD) was first tested in Goa, Mamata Banerjee was the railways minister.

If there is one place where the licence-permit raj in India continues to flourish, it is in the financial sector, with RBI playing the role of apex arbiter.

RBI had issued draft guidelines for introducing credit default swaps (CDSs) in 2007. Then, the global financial crisis hit, and CDSs were accused of being a primary cause.

The hurdles faced by China's Longian Road and Bridge Ltd company in securing employment visas for its Chinese workers has led to a suspension of work on two important road projects in Himachal Pradesh.

Legal reforms in India have long been held up at the desks of status quoist law ministers. Fortunately, M Veerappa Moily seems determined enough to break that mould, at least if the vision document that his ministry prepared and presented to the Chief Justice of India is an indicator. The minister seems to have got his focus areas absolutely right.