The political exigencies are, unfortunately, likely to overwhelm the need for undoing the damage to the agricultural credit sector. At stake, therefore, is the much-needed resurgence of the Indian agriculture.
Inflation is far too important a problem to have to rely on an inadequate and, ultimately, unreliable database for solutions.
A repo rate hike may hurt growth far more than it will help deal with an inflation rate that is already dropping.
While the finance minister is in favour of sacrificing some growth to curb inflation, the problem lies in inflation being more a supply-side than a demand-led problem.
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.
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