The Indian Economy Blog

Archive for the 'Business' Category

Russia’s Rouble Advantage

Monday, September 24th, 2007

Tajikistan, under the Russian influence, has repudiated the Indian proposal for an air base in the strategically important Central Asian republic. The Russians have pressed the Tajikis for this eviction to pressurise the Indians into favouring the Russians while signing the lucrative multi-billion dollar defence deals. The Russian insistence comes as no surprise as […]

“Islamic Banking” And Banking For Muslims In India

Friday, September 14th, 2007

A friend of IEB who wishes to remain anonymous, The Graduate has sent us a great post on Islamic banking in India.
The Graduate is a recently minted MBA who is currently employed with a foreign bank’s business banking operations. He does not consider himself an expert on banking, he hopes to bring lay readers […]

The Much-Discussed Altman Post

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

This concerns a post made by International Herald Tribune columnist, Daniel Altman, on his blog, about India and Japan. IEB bloggers Pragmatic and Shefaly have already blogged about it, here and here.
My specific thoughts on the post aside, I had reached out to Mr. Altman with some questions on his post. He was quick to […]

Fortune 500 Facts for Indian Businesses

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

Chris Zook, director of global strategy at consulting firm Bain & Co., highlights certain facts from Bain’s analysis of Fortune 500 companies over last two decades. He contends that only one-in-three from the Fortune 500 companies in 1994 survived intact, i.e., without bankruptcy, without acquisition by or integration into another company, or without fundamental changes […]

Towards Building A Domestic Defence Industry

Saturday, September 1st, 2007

The bid for procurement of 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft at an estimated cost of Rs. 42,000 crores ($10.2 billion) for the Indian Air Force this week has generated a lot of buzz in the international defence market. The NYT reports that-
Determined to build a domestic arms industry, India is requiring foreign suppliers to make […]

Why India Should Not Demand Cuts in Agricultural Subsidies

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Earlier this year the Doha round of WTO trade negotiations collapsed (again) after the US, Europe, India, and Brazil were unable to reach a reciprocating agreement on cutting farm subsidies in the west, and lowering industrial goods and service barriers in the developing world.
India and Brazil blamed the US and Europe for not lowering their […]

Japan And India: A Relationship To Watch?

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

Daniel Altman, in a blog post on the IHT, says Japan has found a new ‘client’ in India. Referring to a $100B investment project, the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor, he says this relationship is based more on economic convenience than on geographical proximity or historic ties.
By way of background, Japan is cumulatively the 4th largest […]

Incentives vs Exhortations

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

Why strive for excellence when mediocrity will suffice?
You can’t blame Dr Manmohan Singh for telling us what the problem is. Soon after he took office, he told us that fixing the bureaucracy was crucial for India’s development. Last year, he said that the Naxalite insurgency is the biggest threat to internal security. And, now, in […]

60 Years In 60 Words

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Inspired by this: A Briefer history of time. I thought I had read a similar one on India, but couldn’t locate it (let me know if there is one) - Acorn had something similar a while back.
Freedom. Exhilaration. Kashmir Incursion. Integration. Republic formation. Linguistic division. Industrialization. IIT formation. Growth stagnation. Chinese aggression. Aksai Chin […]

Happy 60th Birthday, India!

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

My analysis is one of hope, potential and possibilities. Although political freedom was achieved 60 years ago, economic freedom is still a distant dream for the majority of the population. It is understandable why political freedom is easier to achieve relative to economic freedom. The entire population of the nation has an interest in political […]

Policy Matters : US & India Target Africa

Monday, August 13th, 2007

Two news articles have touched upon the Africa story recently; one by Princeton N. Lyman and Patricia Dorff in The Washington Post reasons out the basis of a new US policy in Africa while the other in Taipei Times by Alex Vines and Gareth Price harps on India’s growing economic links with Africa.
Lyman and […]

Income Inequality In Asia - II

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007

The ADB has just released a report titled “Key Indicators 2007: Inequality in Asia” (covered in IHT and BBC). The report concludes that the gini index, a measure of relative inequality had grown in all 15 countries studied, since the 1990s. More alarmingly, absolute inequality had grown even more. The bank identified the trend as […]

Entrepreneurship : How India Scores Over China

Wednesday, August 1st, 2007

INSEAD Affiliate Professor Patrick Turner surmises that the speed of entrepreneurship development in China is likely to erase the lead that India currently enjoys in entrepreneurship over its northern neighbour. In his view, the entrepreneurship bandwagon in both the countries has been fueled by a combination of a number of overseas residents returning to […]

Does ‘Disabled’ Have To Mean ‘Invisible’?

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

I have worked in India and in Indian organisations abroad for a large part of my professional career. However when I think back I cannot recall more than 2 physically disabled colleagues during that entire time. Mind you, I am a sociable kind of person so my visual - and conversational - range extended beyond […]

Big With Japan

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

This week’s issue of The Economist has a report on how (and why) Japanese investment into China is declining.
But the appeal of China as a manufacturing hub and a huge new market is not universally shared among Japanese businesses. Some companies are moving operations to other countries instead, and others are keeping business back home. […]

News Update (July 30)

Monday, July 30th, 2007

India’s growth rate to be revised upwards from 9.4% to 10.0 %, on the back of strong performance in agriculture and manufacturing.
Close to 60,000 crores of investment being planned in the telecom sector over the next year, with an additional 80 million new consumers being targeted.
In another indicator of the rapid evolution of the Indian private sector, […]

Local vs Foreign

Sunday, July 29th, 2007

This is something about which I have been wanting to blog for a while, and would love to know what IEB readers think.
Check out this article, written around March 2006, by Amelia Gentleman, the IHT correspondent in New Delhi.
Its a well written article, and makes some good points, but what I found intriguing was this […]

News Update (July 25)

Friday, July 27th, 2007

DLF to invest US$ 1.48 billion in Gujarat in a variety of real estate related projects.
India Inc to spice up New York City with its India@60 celebrations (not sure why such an effort is needed, and IF it is, only for the US)
Not exactly econ news, but the US has slashed aid to India dramatically, as India […]

Oil Bonds

Saturday, July 21st, 2007

Once again, the petroleum minister Murli Deora has requested the finance minister to issue oil bonds. In what is becoming common practice now, the money thus raised is going to be used to “compensate the firms for selling below cost”.
For starters, this move is simply bad financial practice, for it violates one of the basic […]

My Passage To India

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

Recently, we had an interesting back-and-forth about whether the Indian economy was overheating. Touchy topic these days: investors are worried that the bears will win the war for the airwaves, property seekers are worried that land is too dear, the finance wonks are blanching at valuations, the policy wonks are complaining about a lack of […]

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