The controversy over whether the government should mandate cooked food or pre-packaged meals at child care centres (anganwadis) and for the mid-day meal scheme in primary schools under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) misses the wood for the trees.
In today's circumstances, however, getting people to borrow more is the last thing on the minds of financial service providers. Most of them are reeling under the weight of assets whose prices have declined precipitously because nobody in his right mind wants to buy them.
Rising geopolitical uncertainty, a falling dollar and the growing speculative interest in commodities trading will keep crude prices volatile.
With the recent issues of ill-treatment of Indian workers in US and Middle East, Indian govt is also faced with the crisis of unorganised labour in India. There are 400 million workers in the unorganised sector in India that are living in subhuman conditions, are being exploited and do not get any financial benefits either. And, they fall beyond India's stringent labour laws. Unorganised Sector Worker's Social Security Bill is riddled with loopholes and yet remains undecided.
To be fair, with the increasing terrorist threats, India's concern may not be unique. The United States, for instance, has always had the reputation of not allowing any email service provider to operate without it being able to break the encrypted code.
Budget has made provisions for increase in the discretionary powers of the taxmen. It remains to be seen whether this move will affect the taxpayers or help them better.
In recent years, as the number of government economic reports coming out in the weeks and months before the Survey has increased, its utility has diminished as a source of data and as the ministry's assessment of the state of the economy.
Apart from signalling the shape of things to come, the stock markets are seen as an important source of funds for investment - so their health can be critical.
The new Sebi chairman will have to work hard in institution building. This involves attracting high-quality people (who might often be young by government standards), putting them in a meritocratic workplace with open discussion, and establishing transparency and accountability structures so that Sebi becomes not a one-man shop but a genuine institution that will be a key player in India's GDP growth.
The Central Statistical Organisation, the government agency responsible for keeping track of how the economy is performing, goes through five phases of estimating how much India's GDP amounts to each year.
Given how Participatory Notes are essentially an OTC market for Indian equity derivatives, moving them onshore should be an important objective.
The International Monetary Fund has ended its annual meetings without doing anything to enhance its credibility and effectiveness. In the process, as Finance Minister P Chidambaram warned in Washington, it risks becoming irrelevant.
The easiest way to explain this away is by dismissing it as a non-representative sample, for such it is in the broad national context. But that would be to miss the point. Admittedly, a database of 10 million rsums from educated people who have access to computers, in a total labour force of 470-odd million and a workforce of 458 million (the difference between the two is the number of unemployed people), is not the ideal database to use for assessing a national problem.
It is not that the government has not done anything to change the format of the annual performance appraisal report, but it is hard to tell what difference these will make.
A sector that was to have created millions of new jobs in the country is reporting job losses before it even gets under way.
While prospective investors in new retail chains are up against the odds in several states, those wanting to invest in primary level agricultural marketing may find the going easier.
Apart from their competence, questions need to be asked about whether credit rating firms can be unbiased about a client who pays them.
The India Meteorological Department releases its long-range monsoon rainfall forecast only a few days prior to the actual onset of the monsoon, serving little purpose
Financial inclusion has become fashionable once again, and the formal sector -- banks and micro-finance institutions -- is straining every nerve to dole out these microscopic loans, and mostly failing because that is not their institutional design.
Unilever's shadow on HUL has been lengthening for some time. One indication recently was the change of name from Hindustan Lever, the identity that had been established in the country for half a century.
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