The decision to privatise Air India comes at a time when the government’s “reform” credentials are being questioned by big business. All information publicly available points to a continuing improvement in the performance of the airlines. Between 2011–12 and 2015–16, the last year for which official financial results are available, the airline showed a steady improvement in terms of its operational profit/loss as well as its passenger load factor. The corporate business press is lauding the government’s privatisation decision, hailing it as the resumption of “reforms” which has come to mean more disinvestment and privatisation. It is hard to understand how mismanaging public assets and then selling them is “reform.”
The government wants to raise solar power generation capacity from the current 8 GW to 100 GW by 2022. How will such an aggressive solar programme impact India’s electricity distribution companies? How will it affect the cost, availability and quality of electricity for consumers? Does the pace of solar adoption being pushed by the government serve the public interest?
The extremely liberal regime ushered in by the Electricity Act 2003 allowed a few existingprivate captive thermal generators to make handsome profits, particularly in certain regions with perceived advantages in terms of availability of coal and water. But the majority of proposed projects were abandoned without cost to the communities of the area they were to be located in. Of the rest, only a few are operational with partial capacity, while others are under construction with delayed schedules or have gone into limbo. A critical analysis of the development of private thermal power projects over a decade.
A friendly atmosphere, a clean kitchen and tasty food make the Pau Gomba Sanju Dhaba at Keylong in Himachal Pradesh the ideal stopover for a tired traveller.
The census and National Sample Survey both provide employment and unemployment data. This article identifies broadly comparable indicators of employment, underemployment and unemployment from the two data sets and finds that Census 2011 estimates of unemployment are far higher than those of the NSS 68th round. This article suggests this is so because the census unemployment estimates also include students and women primarily engaged in domestic duties who are seeking work.
Pursuing the Yamuna upstream to Purola, the gateway to Har ki doon, a valley in north Uttarakhand, a trekker gets lost in blue skies, a warm sun, and many-hued birds.
This article examines the case made by the Aam Aadmi Party for an audit of Delhi's power distribution companies and lower tariffs. The companies have provided enough grounds through questionable accounting and power trading practices to justify an independent audit.
Price spikes in onion in 2010 and 2013 brought little benefit to farmers. It is the big traders who manage to maintain high stocks that make a killing in times of sudden price rise. The government's solutions to such problems have only resulted in the further deterioration of wholesale agricultural markets in many states.
