Do a Satyam on Air India

11

The government must do a Satyam on Air India. Just as it did not trust the anointed lieutenants of Ramalinga Raju to salvage the company after he stripped it clean, Air India's rescue cannot be left to the civil aviation ministry and its appointees, who, over the years, have run the airline to the ground. Another set of names will not revive the airline, so long as it is ministry that calls the shots. For Air India to fly, it must shed adipose - and government ownership as well. After Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel's meeting with the Prime Minister, Air India has been given a month to craft a turnaround strategy. The committee of secretaries headed by the Cabinet Secretary will reportedly oversee the revival, with government support tied to the achievement of agreed milestones, including reduction of the staff strength of 31,000 people. Patel....

Do not be generous, Mr Mukherjee

2

From news reports about tax changes that are likely in the Budget, one would get the impression that there is no sanctity to the Budget-making process, and that the Finance Ministry is not just a sieve, it is a colander. I doubt if this is the case, because Fin Min officials are not liberal with information even when not under surveillance. The reports, in any case, are like the stuff supplied by our snooping agencies about impending terrorist attacks: non-actionable. The veracity of the reports will be attested only after the Budget, by when it will be too late to profit from them. Interest in the Budget was on the wane in the past few years. The Budget presentation in February last year would have been a bland event, but for the loan waiver. The global financial crisis and the Congress Party's strong showing in the....

What Poor People Say About Moving Out of Poverty

4

Economists have described poverty in terms of daily calorie intake, purchasing power or income. But what do poor people have to say about it? Moving out of Poverty is an interesting study by Deepa Narayan of the World Bank based on 2,200 focus group discussions, 4,400 household questionnaires and 2700 life stories in 300 villages across Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam and Uttar Pradesh. They were asked to narrate their experiences between 1995 and 2005. In all, about 30,000 persons are said to have been covered. People described a poor person as one who does not have proper food or a proper house, is unlettered and poorly clothed, works part of the month and may have to put his children to work as well. They said that poverty was more pervasive than the official estimate. The study finds that people who move out of poverty do not....

Jai Ho Kirana Store

4

One would have expected a Parliamentary Standing Committee having members with a progressive outlook on the economy, like Arun Jaitley and Omar Abdullah and Dinesh Trivedi, to give a nuanced report on the impact of organised retailing on kirana stores and jobs. Instead we have a bunch of assertions that have the imprint of BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi, like his four-page preface to the BJP Manifesto about India's glorious past, which Home Minister P Chidambaram described as "outdated" and "atavistic." The committee says traditional kirana retailing is the best format for India. In its eagerness to protect them, it advises a blanket ban on large format stores whether Indian or foreign, a restriction on the number and location of malls, denial of fresh licenses to organised wholesale trading known as 'cash and carry,' and a ban on direct buying from farmers. A study on....

President's Address Falls Short of Congress Promise

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The Congress manifesto had promised 100 days of a work a year, at a real wage of 100 rupees a day for everyone under NREGA. This was understood to mean an individual, not a family entitlement, which is now the case. Nikhil Dey of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan, which champions NREGS primarily in Rajasthan, says a member of the manifesto committee, who is now a minister had clarified to it that NREGS would indeed become an individual right, and wages would be indexed to the consumer price index. (The minister is not being named here because we could not get him to clarify). But the President's address is silent on both these aspects. When C P Joshi, the Rural Development Minister was asked about the omission, he said, "Whatever we said in the manifesto we will see to it we will implement it." The President....

Why The Budget Must Enunciate The Disinvestment Policy

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The meetings sought with Disivestment Secretary Rahul Khullar by investments bankers Rothschild, Goldman Sachs and UBS indicate the expectation that the Congress led government has generated. But Khullar would not like to proceed without a clear disinvestment policy. This policy would take on board the misgivings of Congress MPs, not all of whom are convinced, as well as those allies, Trinamool Congress and DMK who may not be in favour for reasons, not of ideology but local sensitivity. Such a policy would silence discordant voices like those heard from the power, steel and fertiliser ministries. It would also help avoid the go, no-go approach to disinvestment seen during the UPA's previous term in office. The Congress Party's election manifesto has ruled out privatisation of state enterprises. But it says that the Indian people have every right to own part of the shares of public sector enterprises with the....

Why farmers should not fear FDI in retail

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Foreign direct investment in retailing may be a red rag for swadeshis and Leftists who fear it will wipe out kirana stores, but during his pre-Budget consultations Finance Minsiter Pranab Mukherjee has been told that it holds little fear for farmers. Investment in agriculture as a share of total investment has declined over the years, so Chengal Reddy of the Consortium of Indian Farmers has "no objection if FDI comes," because "it helps the Indian farmer in terms of production, quality and technology." During its first term, the UPA government tried to put agriculture on a four percent annual growth path, and it came close to achieving that in the first four years, though growth in the year just past has faltered to 1.6 percent. The flow of credit doubled in the first three years of the UPA's rule, high-yielding varieties of seed, which have technology embedded in them,....