India Business

In July when Pranab Mukherjee presented the First Union Budget Of the 2^nd UPA government, a roadmap for the long term growth of India seemed to be emerging. Today’s Budget is a further continuation of this. I did not see any hardcore reforms and from my pre-Budget expectations its clear this is no surprise. Conservative as hell, this Budget reeks with the nature of the man who read it out in Parliament today.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s a bad Budget, it’s a pretty decent Budget but an opportunity lost to accelerate India’s growth furthermore. More could and should have been done. Still trying to push India into a double digit growth rate is an earnest effort.

Railway Budget 2010 – I’m sorry we didn’t cover it earlier. I hope you understand because just like the rest of India, we too were watching  Sachin Tendulkar hammer the South Africans by belting the first double hundred in the history of One Day Cricket!

And after the full on explosion provided by Sachin, it took one whole day to recover from the magnitude of what we witnessed in Gwalior. Sachin Tendulkar’s innings totally ‘pwned’ Mamata Banerjee’s Rail Budget!

Better late than never but, here is The India Street’s review of the 2010 Indian Union Railway Budget.

Presenting her second rail Budget, Mamata Banerjee the loudmouth from West Bengal has made her focus clear.

This is an extremely important week for India. A new session in Parliament has begun appropriately titled the Budget session. On the 26^th of this month,the end of the working week, Pranab Mukherjee, India’s Finance Minister will present the Union Budget. Two days earlier on the 24^th,Mamata Banerjee will present the Railway Budget.

So here at The India Street,we’re gearing up for a pretty busy week. We will be bringing reviews of both Budgets right here. With less than a week to go what exactly does this Union Budget intend to achieve?

When we reviewed the fiscal Budget in July 09, we weren’t too impressed with it. It was a lopsided almost boring and very stagnant Budget. Not high on ideas and very little reform.

This article isn’t a wish list of what we’d want to see in the Budget. The Finance Ministry is all about balancing politics with economics and almost always we see politics win even if it’s at the cost of sound economic decisions.

Rising prices in India have always been the ‘run to’ issue for any political group.It favors everyone except the government. This of course leaving aside the average Indian who has to spend more.Now that it’s Food Prices which are going through the roof, the usual round of chatter has begun. Opposition parties accusing the incumbent government of lackluster action, ineffectiveness and the usual lingo that anyone in India is used to especially when it’s a battle between political parties. None of the rhetoric in any case means squat if prices do not come down. We’ve been harping on rising prices for over a year now, I sincerely hope that this is not the case a year later as well.

The recently concluded Copenhagen Summit described by one section of the media as ‘The Last Chance to Save the Planet’ has been in no uncertain terms a massive letdown and a flop show. Copenhagen was supposed to be ‘HOPENHAGEN’ and instead it will be described as ‘FLOPENHAGEN’.

In this article, I examine the rift between the developed world and the BASIC countries which came to a head in Copenhagen. I also look at Copenhagen from a strict Indian perspective and how the Indian government has actually done a good job at Copenhagen.

Copenhagen looks like the first straw in a long line of disagreements whilst the world debates the climate change problem. Copenhagen reminds me of the Doha round of the WTO talks which I might add is yet to conclude.

In Part 2 of the Interview with Mark,I discuss  specifics like how E2.0 can impact business in  real life and the prospects it holds for India.

Click the title to read Part 2 as well of this very  informative interview.