Spiti Valley - Some Pictures

All the Prime Minister's Men

The composition of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet would suggest a desire to resume the process of reforms, which had practically stalled during his somewhat uninspiring previous term. It is also indicative of a more assertive Congress Party within the larger coalition of the United Progressive Alliance. The Congress has retained key economic ministries and also taken control of other important ones that were previously with their allies. With Pranab Mukherjee at the Treasury, P Chidambaram at Home and AK Antony at Defence, three crucial departments appear to be in the most capable hands.

Mr Mukherjee, possibly the senior most member of the Singh administration, has over the years served in various positions in the government. He was India’s Finance Minister between 1982 and 1984 in the Indira Gandhi cabinet and brings to the table considerable technical competence and robust political acumen. Disinvestment of state-owned enterprises; financial sector reform; the implementati…

The Employment Conundrum

Over the last three months, I have had the opportunity of engaging with our clients across various forums and cities. What provided a platform for this interaction was my briefing on four critical initiatives that we believe will, if properly implemented, serve as game changers with a palpable impact on economic output. The question that consistently came up almost everywhere was on the perception of jobless growth and consequently, rising unemployment within India. This has possibly been based on recent press reports and television debates that consistently cite certain headline statistics. These suggest a fall in employment levels between 2011-12 and 2015-16 compared to vigorous growth in earlier years, since 2004-05. Even on the surface, this conclusion does not gel fittingly with other statistics. For instance, indirect tax collections and consumption expenditure, which are both proxies of aggregate spending and wellbeing, do not corroborate falling employment. Tax collections ha…

Uday: a federalist success story

At our 21st Annual CEO Roundtable in Thimphu last week, there was spirited debate over the performance of the current administration. A participant suggested that the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana (Uday), a scheme to reform India’s downstream power sector, for all its fanfare was actually a failure of sorts and that India’s renewable energy programme, specifically on solar energy, was lacking on many counts. Whilst it was my intuitive belief that both claims were unsympathetic, I thought it would perhaps be in order to examine the facts in detail and subsequently provide an assessment. This paper, accordingly, presents an analysis of the first of the two issues – the Uday programme. The second will be addressed in a subsequent piece.
The electricity distribution crisis: background
Electricity distribution has been disastrously managed over the last three decades and in 2015 was on the verge of absolute collapse. Under-priced power, operational inefficiency, broken equipment, rampant th…

Adit Jain - Perspectives

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