business

Indian Economy is one of the toughest to guard and the major responsibility lies with the Finance Ministry shared with RBI and other Institutions. It is no brained and even a high school kid will tell you that the economy is in doldrums be it the GST Bill or Major policy decisions where the Ministers have flip-floped maybe due to lack of governance experience and arrogance for not listening to expert analysts like us.

The Good in the Modi Government
Almost everyone we have met in the bureaucratic circles over the past year has highlighted that the work ethic has been strong at various ministries thanks to consistent pushing from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), which holds regular review meetings

Bihar—the Hindi heartland—post the 2014 polls, has for the first time turned into an electoral battleground. It is a large state characterised by embedded religion & caste based loyalties and the stakes are high for both the alliances.

For PM Modi, it is in a sense a referendum on his governance of past 15 months, especially after the recent washout of Parliament session. Besides, this election comes after BJP’s humiliating defeat in Delhi Assembly polls.

For the Janata Parivar, which has been cobbled with merger of 2 regional foes, it is a grand experiment to halt the Modi juggernaut. Failure to do so will seriously undermine their political prospects.

Caste equation favours grand alliance…: As it stands today, the caste equation is stacked in favour of the Janata Parivar. The alliance will consolidate Yadav, Muslim and Koermi votes (~35-40%), ~3-5% higher than NDA’s core vote bank of upper castes and Dalits. As regards

A report released by Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Communication and IT highlights various findings out of the performance and compliance audit of Department of Telecommunication (DoT)

Two key points involving Reliance Jio Infocomm include it getting an undue benefit of Rs33.67bn when migrating to Unified License (UL) and lack of diligence by the DoT in the auction of BWA Spectrum.

Firstly, the report highlights that the BWA auction NIA did not include financial parameters such as net worth, lack of intermediate roll-out milestones and fixation of lower rate of spectrum usage @ 1 per cent of AGR. The DoT did not

Whilst Vinod Rai’s successor as the CAG has not exactly set the world on fire, the 600 officers who report into the CAG seem to have been galvanised by the remarkable impact of the reports that Mr Rai published over 2010-2013 exposing the Most Corrupt Congress led Government which produced scams such as CWG, 2G, Coal Gate, etc Credit must also be given to VK Shunglu who was the first CAG to lay down a clear process for investigating, documenting and publicising malfeasance in the public sector. A 100-page investigation and report-writing manual was published by Mr Shunglu around 15 years ago and how successive versions of the manual have evolved.

Officially, this cadre of the India civil service – containing

The collapse in crude oil prices (down c50% in 2014) is roughly a $50bn (2.3% of GDP) bounty for India. At $50/bbl crude prices, India can have a current account surplus of 1% in FY16. At this price, assuming current retailing prices, Indian Govt / Oil companies may end up over-recovering $10bn, vs under-recovery of $23bn in FY14. In other words, there may not be any effective need for net subsidies for oil (0.8% of GDP in FY14).

If India can lock in current lower crude prices for say a year, it can get an assured window to sort out other macro issues for economic recovery, without having to worry about oil volatility. In absolute terms, the move