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Saturday, Feb 16,2013, 10:49 IST .
In the run up to Budget 2013, I hear it every day. Subsidies are
doles to the poor, must be curbed. There are no 'free lunches'.
While social security for a majority of India's population is being
considered as 'free lunches', none of the TV panelists (and
newspaper writers) ever talk of 'free monthly ration' that the
industry is being given year after year. The on..
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Monday, Nov 19,2012, 12:53 IST .
Several years ago, must be sometimes between 1988-89, I was
interviewing Dalai Lama at McLeod Ganj, a suburb of Dharamsala,
where he lives in exile. I was then the State Correspondent for
the Indian Express, posted in Shimla. It was
during the course of the pretty-long interview wherein we had
discussed about what Dalai Lama called as 'cultural genocide' in
Tibet, I..
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Thursday, Nov 08,2012, 11:01 IST .
Every now and then I read about the desperate need to invest $ 1
trillion in infrastructure projects in India. Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh has reiterated this time and again. Addressing the
Asian Development Bank at Manila in May, former Finance Minister
(and now the President of India) Pranab Mukherjee said: "India
needs about USD 1 trillion in the next five years for
infrastructure d..
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Sunday, Oct 28,2012, 13:19 IST .
Employment generation is always on the top of agenda for any
visiting Head of State. No, I didn't mean the visiting
Presidents/Prime Ministers want to look into the possibility of
creating employment in India . What I meant was that they come to
India with the hope of creating thousands of jobs back home. I have
always heard successive US Presidents spell out how many jobs they
are going ..
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Monday, Oct 15,2012, 18:54 IST .
Sometimes, when I am finished with my meal at a marriage
ceremony and go out to throw my patal (made from
leaves) in the dustbin, I watch with great regret and concern when
a team of urchins would descend to look for leftovers. After these
children are done away with, I find the dogs moving in. At the same
time I can spot a number of crows waiting for their turn.
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Tuesday, Aug 21,2012, 00:19 IST .
Brazil is the biggest exporter of Indian breeds of cows. Gir cow
now records over 62 litres/day in Brazil...
This majestic cow is from Brazil. Belonging to the Gir breed of
Gujarat, this cow -- named She-ra -- clocked 62.033 litres of milk
in a 3-day milk competition at the 40th Expaja in Brazil, beating
her own record of 59.947 litres. While
Indian cattl..
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Wednesday, Jul 11,2012, 19:27 IST .
I was dismayed to read the lead article in The Times of
India today (TOI, June 16, 2012). The
article: Let's not overreact by India's
chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu (available here:
http://bit.ly/KzAhKA) in reality makes a fervent appeal to allow
FDI in retail. To bolster the sagging economy, he has only two
suggestions: 1) to open up..
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Monday, Jul 02,2012, 17:15 IST .
It has taken the civil society years of struggle to ensure that
the plant genetic resources (PGR), which is essentially the
preserve of farmers, are not passed on freely into the hands of
multinational corporations/seed companies. After the Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD) was signed in 1992, and plant varieties
were for the first time accepted to be a national sovereign
resource, the..
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Friday, Jun 29,2012, 19:41 IST .
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt terms the Eurozone
economic crisis 'serious' and has been quoted as saying: "In
reality, we're talking about one of the greatest financial rescue
operations the world has seen." He was responding to a question by
Swedish Radio after it was known that Spain may be the 4th member
of the 17-nation Eurozone to seek outside help. It is..
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Saturday, Jun 16,2012, 23:08 IST .
At a time when the total food stocks are likely to swell to a
record 75 million tonnes by June 1, out of which nearly 25 million
tonnes of the stocks will be piled up in the open for lack of
storage space, the demand for allowing exports is already growing.
Ministry of Commerce has already started an exercise to know how
much quantity of wheat can be allowed for exports.
..
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Monday, May 14,2012, 08:47 IST .
Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen is angry. This time her anger
is about film stars who put their 'pretty faces' to social causes.
Even before Aamir Khan launched his weekly show SatyamevJayate (on
Star Plus and DD National channels simultaneously), film stars had
ventured into areas about which they knew little or cared little.
But since it became fashionable, and TV channels wanted..
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Saturday, May 05,2012, 00:26 IST .
"India no longer Mittal's priority" screamed a headline in The
Economic Times (April 30, 2012). Having seen the Steel tycoon
occupy the dias with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the
inauguration of the Bathinda refinery in Punjab a few days back, I
was obviously curious to know the reason. I read the news report
more carefully. The sub-head itself made it quite clear: Policy
pa..