Union Budget 2009 and what it means for foreign affairs and defence
In the July 20th issue of Outlook magazine I point out that the Budget has the good, the bad and the ugly for strategic affairs. An edited version of the following appeared in print.
First the good: the UPA government used the Union Budget to [...]
Out of context
To draw attention to Bibek Debroy’s commentary on the second UPA government’s first budget, I wrote, on Twitter:
Bibek Debroy in IE: “If con is antithesis of pro, Congress is the antithesis of Progress.” http://is.gd/1pspa [@acorn]
In response, Zahan Malkani writes (via email):
This is regarding your Tweet about the IE opinion piece ‘Read Between the [...]
A state of moral welfare
The government of Karnataka, we are informed has “taken a decision to introduce a scheme to conduct pilgrimage tours for poor people.” People below the poverty line (BPL) qualify. (But the last time the Karnataka government tried to compile a list of BPL families 91% of them applied.) According to the [...]
Planned spending, informed planning
Sushant K Singh and Ramavtar Yadav make a case for police reforms in today’s Mint.
Social and economic security needs to be immediately adopted as one of the Plan sectors by the commission. This sector should set national objectives and provide assured resources—funds, manpower, equipment and training—for policing and encompass crimes, crimogens, criminal [...]
Caught in a storm without an umbrella
Mint makes a very important point in today’s editorial:
We have often said in these columns that the UPA government made a cardinal mistake during its term: buoyant tax revenues should have been used to fix the fiscal problem. The money that flowed into the kitty was frittered away, even [...]
Wall Street woes
By V Anantha Nageswaran
In the last few months, financial markets had got used to the idea of the authorities conjuring up some solutions to problems in the US financial industry over the weekend and announcing it on Monday morning (Asian time) in time for the Asian stocks to open higher. This routine worked [...]
How you should react if the government increases taxes to subsidise petrol
Over at Barbad Katte, Ramesh makes a startling call:
Here is a possible response to the Petroleum Minister’s proposal to levy a cess on income tax payers in lieu of a hike in the price of fuel. Get hold of your neighbourhood Congress man and [...]
They destroyed the paddle. Schitt creek* is coming up
Growth in industrial production fell to 3%, the lowest in six years, indicating that bad times might be ahead. There’s worse. As Niranjan Rajadhyaksha demonstrates, the UPA government has frittered away the opportunity to put the economy on the footing to handle the coming problems. In the [...]
He advocates a false morality to disguise his government’s failures
Dr Manmohan Singh the prime minister has routinely relied on platitudes (instead of on incentives) to motivate the UPA government’s policies. But he is getting even the platitudes wrong. In a country where the average annual per capita income hovers around an unacceptably low US$1000, he [...]
The defence ministry surrendered 10% of its capital allocations last year
In the Union Budget 2008-09, unveiled by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in parliament today, the budgeted capital outlay for defence services has been increased from Rs 41,922 crore to Rs 48,007 crore, by around 14.5%.
That’s good news for military modernisation. If the albatross-like procurement [...]
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