Opinion

Bharat Jhunjhunwala Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das has said that bringing petroleum products under GST will lead to initial sacrifices but will beget benefits in the long run. A report of the State Bank of India has calculated that the initial loss of...

Parimita Mohanty & Annette Wallgren By now, most countries in Asia and the Pacific have proposed some sort of post-pandemic recovery package. Many include investments in sustainability, which the United Nations has repeatedly urged governments to undertake. Some plans currently include only Budget totals, with...

Dhanada K Mishra The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) just released its quadrennial Infrastructure report card for 2021 on March 3. It assessed the state of infrastructure of the United States of America in 17 different categories such as aviation, roads, bridges, dams, energy,...

Rup Narayan Das Today on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Biju Patnaik, it is propitious to recall his seminal role in laying the foundational edifice of the strategic defence and security cooperation with USA to face the China threat. A major offshoot of...

Melvin Durai I live in a medium-sized home, but some people might consider it a large home, and Mukesh Ambani might consider it a broom closet. A billionaire like him would probably find my home small, but it certainly isn’t tiny, especially compared to all...

Santosh Kumar Mohapatra Odisha Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari, presented the State Budget for fiscal 2021-22 at a critical juncture when the economy is being ravaged by the pandemic-induced recession and central assistance is dwindling. The Budget has evoked mixed reactions. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik described...

Shivaji Sarkar The GST or ‘one nation one tax’ is not the kind of El Dorado the country had promised to itself. The players are all unhappy – the States, traders, manufacturers, CAs and possibly even the Centre as it is burdened with all problems...

PSM Rao People demand satisfactory answers to these six questions to know why the petrol and diesel prices in India are again on the boil: 1) Is it because the international crude prices are skyrocketing? 2) Has the dollar price increased steeply, whereby more rupees...

Rup Narayan Das The recent development in Pondicherry Legislative Assembly has once again brought to the fore the lacunae in the anti-defection law which needs to be fixed. In a democratic parliamentary polity changing party affiliation on part of the legislator who is elected from...

Shivaji Sarkar The country is in a quandary about the privatisation of public sector banks. Amendments to the Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) 1970 and 1980 are on the cards. The two laws led to bank nationalisation in two phases. Finance Minister Nirmala...