Indian Economy: News and Discussion

[NSG_Blackcats]

Here is an article on maternal and child mortality rates in India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's fight to lower maternal and child mortality rates is failing due to growing social inequalities and shortages in primary healthcare facilities despite an economic boom, the United Nations said on Thursday.
India's maternal mortality rate (MMR) stands at 450 per 100,000 live births -- against 540 in the 1998-99 period -- and way behind the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which call for a reduction to 109 by 2015, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said. "We know what needs to be done to save the lives of the 78,000 women who die from pregnancy and childbirth each year in India," said Karin Hulshof, UNICEF India representative.
"Primary health care that embraces every stage of maternal, newborn and child health must be made available to all of India's most vulnerable women and children so they can survive and thrive," Hulshof added.India's infant mortality rate stands at 57 per 1,000 live births, more than impoverished Eritrea and Bangladesh, Indian officials say. The MDGs are eight social and economic development benchmarks set for nations to accomplish by 2015.They include reducing poverty levels, increasing universal education and fighting the spread of AIDS.
India is not on track to meet half its MDGs by 2015, experts said last September in New Delhi, while presenting a global MDGs report. According to UNICEF, India has to achieve about a two-thirds reduction in MMR to meet the target by 2015, which they said was difficult given growing social and income inequalities. "Widening disparities are prevalent in health outcomes between income groups and between social and caste groups," the UNICEF said in its "State of World Children-2009" report. More than two-thirds of Indians live in rural areas, many without access to basic medical facilities, despite three years of nearly 9 percent economic growth. About 65 percent of Indian women still deliver at home and those who are from the lower caste suffer the most as they are often denied access to basic healthcare.
Indian states show disparity in maternal mortality rates. While the northern state of Uttar Pradesh has a maternal mortality rate of 517, almost comparable to Sudan at 550, the MMR in the southern state of Kerala is only 110. In neighbouring Nepal, the Maoist-led government announced it has started providing free maternal services to pregnant women in state-run centres to reduce maternal and child mortality rates. About 80 percent of women deliver their babies at home where 67 percent of all maternal deaths occur, Nepalese officials said.

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[NSG_Blackcats]

To bridge the wide gap between Urban and Rural India GOI Started a Programe called Bharat Nirman.
Bharat Nirman - Rural Roads
To upgrade rural infrastructure, the Government of India has conceived a time-bound business plan under Bharat Nirman. It is a flagship programme for the country. A commitment of over Rs. 1,74,000 crores has been made to Bharat Nirman with the objective of unleashing the growth potential of our villages. As part of the programme, Government of India intends that by end of financial year 2008 – 2009, every village of over 1000 population, or over 500 in hilly and tribal areas, has an all-weather road.

To achieve the targets of Bharat Nirman, 1,46,185 kms. of road length is proposed to be constructed by 2009. This will benefit 66,802 unconnected eligible habitations in the country. To ensure full farm to market connectivity, it is also proposed to upgrade 1,94,132 kms. of the existing Associated Through Routes. A sum of approximately Rs. 48,000 crore is proposed to be invested to achieve this.
Now we all have to wait and see how efficiently this project is being implemented.

Progress Ending March 09

 

[Tamil]

India Growing Faster. Invest in R&D, Infrastructure, Power, Education and Medical care.
and stop the fights between moist/LeT/Naxals etc., first. Strong Judaical & Police and Intelegence agency is Important for our study groth

 

[NSG_Blackcats]

India Growing Faster. Invest in R&D, Infrastructure, Power, Education and Medical care.
and stop the fights between moist/LeT/Naxals etc., first. Strong Judaical & Police and Intelegence agency is Important for our study groth

Only growing faster is not the solution. It is really important to see the benefit of strong growth reaches to the poor man and not to some handful of industrialists.
Have you ever thought Why India have so many billionaires and India is yet to have some big international brand? (like GE, Intel, Google, Microsoft..etc)
India has to control 2 things at the earliest. One is our population growth and second is the level of corruption. Without controlling population how fast we grow in the long run we have to face some serious problems.

 

[NSG_Blackcats]

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Disparities Sharpen as GDP Grows​

By Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

NEW DELHI, Jan 29 (IPS) - That the first, second and third worlds coexist within India has long been known. A new academic report corroborates this but also speaks of a 'fourth world' left behind in this country of a billion people that aspires to be a global leader.

Even as the gross domestic product (GDP) picks up an impressive clip, the authors of the country's first ever ‘Social Development Report' warn that, since the economy was liberalised 15 years ago, disparities and inequalities have sharpened and regional imbalances widened to a point where social instability has become a serious threat. The 225-page volume, released on the weekend by the autonomous Council for Social Development (CSD) and published by Oxford University Press, essentially discusses issues related to poverty and unemployment in a compilation of more than 170-odd ‘development reports' on India.

But the authors' focus is on challenges in the health sector, education, urban governance, and the condition of women, communal relations, social integration, inequality, population mobility, decentralisation and social security - using startling facts based entirely on official statistics. While the proportion of poor people in the total population came down from 55 per cent in 1973-74 to 26 per cent by the turn of the century, the progress was impressive in only three states - western Punjab (from 28 per cent to 6 per cent), northern Haryana (from 35 per cent to 9 percent) and Kerala (from 60 per cent to 13 per cent).

On the other hand, in three poor states in eastern India, the poverty ratio declined far more slowly - from 66 per cent to 47 per cent in Orissa, from 62 per cent to 42 percent in Bihar and from 51 percent to 36 percent in Assam.

Also, ironically, Punjab and Haryana were the worst performers when it came to their child sex ratios indicating a high incidence of female foeticide which is illegal in India. There were only 796 female children for every 1,000 male children in the under-six age group in Punjab, 808 in Haryana and 837 in another prosperous state, western Gujarat - a classic case of mismatch between economic and social indicators.

The report also highlights the distribution of poverty in India's hierarchical society which remains skewed against traditionally disadvantaged sections of the population, including tribals and dalits (so-called untouchables). These disadvantaged sections accounted for 75 percent of the total number of poor people in India in 1999-2000. Whereas India accounts for 17 percent of the world's population, 36 per cent of the world's poor surviving on less than one US dollar a day live in the country, as do 68 percent of those afflicted with leprosy and 30 percent of people suffering from tuberculosis. India also accounts for 26 percent of the deaths that take place all over the world that could have been prevented with vaccinations during childhood.

''The social problems of contemporary India are the result of a complex nexus between the factors of exclusion and inclusion that are rooted in the history, values and cultural ethos of the country," says social scientist Amitabh Kundu, chief editor of the volume. ''Many of these problems are based on policies of segregation that have not been addressed by the development strategies followed by successive governments," he adds. ''The incidence of poverty has certainly come down but not uniformly and the same is true for the spread of primary education and healthcare."
''The policies of globalisation and economic liberalisation have undermined the role of larger societal norms as well as the state apparatus that could have countered exclusionary forces keeping social tensions simmering," argues Muchkund Dubey, former career diplomat and current president of the CSD. ''As a matter of deliberate policy, the government has started scaling down, if not retreating from, its constitutional responsibility of providing public goods in such crucial areas as education, health, sanitation and housing," he adds, pointing out that this has resulted in ''a sharp deterioration in the conditions of the poorest and marginalised,'' Dubey said.
The different chapters in the volume point towards an Indian society that is becoming increasingly polarised not just along class lines but also across regions and states. ''If the gap between the richest and poorest states were roughly around 1:3 during the 1990s, this gap has now widened to around 1:5,'' says N J Kurian, who is on the editorial board of the report. Pointing towards the yawning gap between policy prescriptions and implementation of programmes, Neera Chandhoke, professor of political science at Delhi University, said government policies ''meant for the poor have been indiscriminately generalised" and the situation has been compounded by ''rampant corruption and mismanagement of scarce resources''.
She said the cases of Punjab and Haryana clearly indicated that ''economic growth does not necessarily lead to social development" and that ‘'the relationship that is often sought to be drawn between democracy and social development is rather tenuous''. Commented well-known social scientist Amit Bhaduri: ''India is a political success and an economic failure despite its eight percent GDP growth rate, simply because there are between 280 million and 300 million people in the country who live in sub-human poverty."

India continues to confound many with its crazy contrasts. Its cities glitter and its elite talk of the country becoming a knowledge superpower. It is a nation with 17 languages on its currency notes.

A report prepared in April 2004 by the United States-based financial services leader Goldman Sachs observed: ''India is often characterised as a country of contradictions. This idea is exemplified by the popular phrase that India accounts for close to a third of the world's software engineers and a quarter of the world's undernourished". Coexisting in the country is a range of political and economic systems, including different forms of feudalism, capitalism and socialism.
But the good news is that India has defied the contention of doomsayers that say such a deeply-divided country can never survive as a single nation-state. After independence in 1947, India not only stayed in one piece but has emerged as one of the fastest growing countries of the world.

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[Pintu]

Food inflation goes up by 1.2 pc in just one week- Indicators-Economy-News-The Economic Times

Food inflation goes up by 1.2 pc in just one week
30 Jul 2009, 1711 hrs IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: Higher vegetables and pulse prices pushed up the country's food inflation by 1.2 per cent during the week ended July 18, giving no relief to consumers, even as the overall price level for the seventh week in a row remained below zero.

The maximum increase was seen in the wholesale price of vegetables, which rose by 4.9 per cent, followed by pulses that went up by 4.2 per cent and meat/egg/fish rose by 3.5 per cent in just one week, according to official data.

Food inflation rose even as India's annual rate of inflation fell marginally to minus 1.54 per cent for the week ended July 18 from minus 1.17 in the previous week.

According to economists, prices of vegetables are ruling high due to short supply of key items like tomato amid delayed monsoon in most states.

Similarly, prices of most pulses are ruling high owing to supply-demand mismatch. Currently, there is a shortage of four million tonnes of pulses in the country, they said, adding the impact of late monsoon on the planting of Kharif pulses is also weighing on prices.

In the pulses category, the wholesale prices of arhar (tur) went up 9 per cent, gram by four per cent, moong and masur by three per cent each and urad by two per cent during the week in the wholesale market, the data showed.

Currently, arhar has breached a psychological mark of Rs 100 a kg in most retail counters in the country.

Consumers are hit badly as retail prices of most food commodities are ruling about 50 per cent higher than the wholesale market, experts said.

According to the data, the wholesale price of mutton has also shown a sharp rise of about 14 per cent, while some cereals like maize and ragi have increased marginally by one per cent each during the week ended July 18.

However, the prices of condiments and spices showed a decline of 1.4 per cent, it said.

The country produced about 233.88 million tonnes of foodgrains in 2008-09, compared with 230.78 million tonnes in the previous year.

 

[I-G]

Action started for getting back money from Swiss banks: PM

Action started for getting back money from Swiss banks: PM

Updated on Thursday, July 30, 2009, 14:09 IST
New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said in Rajya Sabha that "action has already started" for getting back black money belonging to Indians from Swiss banks.

His remark came after Prakash Javadekar (BJP) sought to know from the Prime Minister what the UPA government was doing to bring back the money within 100 days.

As Javadekar's supplementary was not related to the main question on G-8 meeting, Chairman Hamid Ansari asked him to stick to the subject.


But, the Prime Minister stood up and said, "yesterday when Finance Minister was replying to the Finance Bill in this House, he specifically dealt with this aspect and had said that action has already started on it."

Bureau Report
Action started for getting back money from Swiss banks: PM

 

[I-G]

Adopt carrot, stick policy to get money from Swiss banks’

Updated on Wednesday, July 29, 2009, 21:17 IST

New Delhi: Industrialist Rahul Bajaj on Wednesday said the government should adopt a carrot and stick policy to bring back Indian money stashed in Swiss banks and suggested that identities of account holders should be protected.


"Tax this money at the maximum tax rate prevailing in the country and give them (account holders) the carrot that after the tax, the money will be legal. Give them a strong stick... a time frame and say that after this 100 per cent of their money will be taken away," the Independent member said in the Rajya Sabha.

Participating in a discussion on the Finance Bill, he demanded steps to bring back the money and suggested that the identity of account holders be protected. Even government officers should not come to know the names, he said.

Saying there are various ways to do it, Bajaj suggested allowing account holders to bring back the money through "bearers' bond", which will automatically enable the government to tax it.

He said that otherwise only small people will come out to declare their deposits but not the big ones adding, "there are very big people", whose money is deposited there.

Bajaj said since account holders will be allowed to bring back their money only after paying tax, the "ethical question" surrounding the issue will also go away.

The noted industrialist felt that the Switzerland government on its own was not going to allow this money to be returned to India.

?Adopt carrot, stick policy to get money from Swiss banks?

 

[ajay_ijn]

why is Indias growth not inclusive?

in my opinion.

1. It has been limited to industrial and services sector. Agriculture hasn't seen any great improvements like IT or Manufacturing. no green revolution to improve lives of farmers.

2. To be in manufacturing or services sector, one definitely needs the right set of skills. You are not even considered if you are not literate (i mean 10th Standard pass atleast). illiterate people and small farmers who are fed up with agriculture and move to cities in search of work suffer more due to high prices of everything in cities and the fact that they will be never paid enough to lead a live above poverty line unless they have new skills to get jobs where they will be paid good.

3. Lack of rural infrastructure restricted the investment and growth to only few places.

4. Manufacturing has not grown consistently at high rates for rural economy to divert from agriculture to industry based jobs.

5. Is 8 to 9% growth for 5 to 6 years enough to drastically change the situation in India? which has such a large population of poor.

 

[NSG_Blackcats]

When we talk about India is the second fastest growing economy, reports like this shows our growth is not inclusive.

India has 214 million hungry people, says report​

New Delhi: India has emerged as the world capital of hunger with 214 million hungry people, Vandana Shiva of NGO Navdanya Thursday quoted a report as saying. "India has emerged as the capital of hunger with 214 million people being denied the right to food," Shiva said, adding that this was more than the total number of hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa.

India also fairs poorly on the Global Hunger Index where it ranks 94 among 118countries.

"Fifty-seven million children in India are underweight because of lack of adequate nutrition. This is one third of all underweight children in the world," Shiva added, quoting the report "Why is Every 4th Indian Hungry?"

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[Vinod2070]

^^ Figures like these make my head hang in shame.

The governance has failed this country. We have the most corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy and political class there is.

 

[Sridhar]

Air India in talks with Boeing to cancel six 777-300ERs

Air India in talks with Boeing to cancel six 777-300ERs
By Siva Govindasamy


Beleaguered Indian national carrier Air India is in talks to cancel an order for six Boeing 777-300ERs that it was due to receive in the next two years.
"Air India is in a dialogue with Boeing on the cancellation of six Boeing 777s in view of the global aviation scenario," says an Air India spokesman. The carrier has asked the government, its owner, for a bail-out to cope with massive losses and rising debt.
It had been due to receive the six aircraft in the 2010-11 and 2011-12 fiscal years, says a spokesman. According to Flight's ACAS database, Air India has 10 777-300ERs and three Boeing 777-200LRs on order.
These were part of a 2006 order worth an estimated $8 billion for 23 777s, 27 787-8s and 18 737-800s. Indian Airlines, with which Air India merged last year, also ordered 48 new Airbus aircraft at the same time. Debt levels at the National Aviation Co of India (Nacil), Air India's parent company, reached 152.41 billion Indian rupees in June after paying for new aircraft.
Earlier in July, Air India said that it had received a $1.06 billion loan from JPMorgan Chase & Co to fund its of 10 Boeing passenger aircraft - three 777-200s, four 777-300s and three 737-800s - that it plans to take delivery in this financial year. A spokesman said that there are no plans to cancel the delivery of the aircraft that are due in the year to 31 March 2010.
He declined to comment on whether Air India would cancel any of its 787 orders.
Air India made a loss of around 50 billion Indian rupees for the year to 31 March, according to the country's civil aviation minister. It has been losing money for years and has asked the government for an equity infusion of 12.31 billion Indian rupees and a soft loan of 27.5 billion Indian rupees that will be repaid over 15 years.
The government, in turn, has asked it to come up with a cost-cutting and restructuring programme that will help it to return to profitability.
In June, Air India had an 18% share of the Indian domestic market with 6.5 million passengers. That put it behind Kingfisher Airlines (24.4%) and Jet Airways/JetLite (23.9%). Its load factor in June was 68%.


Air India in talks with Boeing to cancel six 777-300ERs

 

[NSG_Blackcats]

Four notes out of 10 lakh notes in circulation are fake: RBI​

MUMBAI: Out of 10 lakh notes in circulation, only four notes were found to be forged in 2007-08, the Reserve Bank has said. "... the forged notes detected by the banking system, including the Reserve Bank, in 2007-2008 were four notes in one million notes in circulation," RBI said in a release.

The number of forged notes detected by the banking system in 2007-2008 was 1,95,811 against 4,422.5 crore notes in circulation, the apex bank said. RBI also said that some media reports have been erroneously quoting the Nayak Committee findings for estimates of forged currency notes in circulation in India.

However, there is no estimate of forged notes in circulation by any agency, the release added. The Nayak Committee, which was set up in 1988 to go into the dynamics of currency management, estimated the value of notes in circulation in 2000 at Rs 1,69,000 crore. "The Nayak Committee did not make any study of fake notes and did not give any figure relating to such notes," the release said.

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[ajay_ijn]

Govt may give incentives to services sector in FTP

The government is mulling incentives for the services sector in the Foreign Trade Policy which is expected to be announced in mid-August. The sector, which alone contributes over 40 per cent of the country’s overall export basket, has been grappling with a global demand spiral since the economic recession set in the last fiscal.

“We are talking to the services sector as it makes a substantial contribution to our global commerce, particularly exports. They have made a few presentations. We are talking to all the stakeholders before we formulate the Foreign Trade Policy for the next five years. The policy will address the short-term challenges of the sector,” Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said. The minister, however, refused to divulge the details of the incentive package.

India, at present, accounts for 2.7 per cent of the global services export market. “India has the potential to increase its share in the world market in services exports to 4-5 per cent in the next three years,” Sharma said.

The ongoing global economic slowdown has impacted India’s services sector which accounts for over 50 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). India’s services exports registered 12.2 per cent growth at $101 billion in 2008-09, compared with a 23.3 per cent increase in the previous year.

Currently in India, 58 out of 150 million jobs in services sector are being affected by the crisis. However, 70 per cent of the incremental GDP growth, over 60 per cent of new jobs and 50 per cent of India ’s exports in next five years would come from services sectors.

 

[NSG_Blackcats]

Some dark spots in our Growth Story

=>Despite its rapid growth, India remains a poor country. Only one in ten Indian workers are formally employed, according to the OECD. The vast majority of Indians work informally, pays no taxes, and enjoys no social protection whatsoever.

=>The rich-poor divide has increased and poverty reduction figures of India are now lower than those of Bangladesh. More than 300 million people in India still live in deep poverty at less than a dollar a day (PPP) while another 350 million live on less than two dollars a day.

=>Although agriculture contributes only 21% of India’s GDP, its importance in the country’s economic, social, and political fabric goes well beyond this indicator. The rural areas are still home to some 72 percent of the India’s 1.1 billion people, a large number of whom are poor. Most of the rural poor depend on rain-fed agriculture and fragile forests for their livelihoods.

=>Till the year 2000, around 40 per cent of India’s 825,000 habitations lacked all-weather roads. Nearly 74 % of the rural population was not fully integrated into the national economy. In 2000, the Government of India launched the Prime Minister’s Rural Roads program (PMGSY). The program aims to connect 180,000 villages nationwide by constructing 370,000 kms of all weather roads and upgrading another 370,000 kms of the existing rural road network.

=>The Government of India estimates that in 2007, about 2.31 million Indians were living with HIV (1.8 – 2.9 million) with an adult prevalence of 0.34 percent. India’s highly heterogeneous epidemic is largely concentrated in six states—in the industrialized south and west and in the north-eastern tip. On average, HIV prevalence in those states is 4–5 times higher than in the other states. HIV prevalence is highest in the Mumbai-Karnataka corridor, the Nagpur area of Maharashtra, the Nammakkal district of Tamil Nadu, coastal Andhra Pradesh, and parts of Manipur and Nagaland.

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[NSG_Blackcats]

June exports down 27.7 pct​

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's exports fell an annual 27.7 percent in June to $12.8 billion, its ninth straight monthly fall, and the government said in a statement on Monday, as recessions at developed nations continue to slash demand for Indian goods. Exports were down 31.3 percent at $35.4 billion between April and June this year from the same period in the previous year.
Imports dropped 29.3 percent to $18.98 billion in June. Trade deficit shrunk to $6.16 billion in June from $9.1 billion a year earlier.

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[ajay_ijn]

June exports down 27.7 pct​

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's exports fell an annual 27.7 percent in June to $12.8 billion, its ninth straight monthly fall, and the government said in a statement on Monday, as recessions at developed nations continue to slash demand for Indian goods. Exports were down 31.3 percent at $35.4 billion between April and June this year from the same period in the previous year.
Imports dropped 29.3 percent to $18.98 billion in June. Trade deficit shrunk to $6.16 billion in June from $9.1 billion a year earlier.

Link

glad to see trade deficit shrunk for once.

 

[ajay_ijn]

I never thought Bharti-MTN negotiations could influence South African Currency.
Rand Fluctuates as MTN-Bharti Extend Talks
Rand Fluctuates as MTN-Bharti Extend Talks, Manufacturing Drops - Bloomberg.com
ug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s rand drifted between gains and losses after MTN Group Ltd. extended merger talks with India’s largest mobile operator, raising concern a new deal may result in smaller inflows into Africa’s biggest economy.

“The postponement of a possible merger raises some concern that the initial structure of the deal could be changed,” said Brigid Taylor, a senior currency trader at Rand Merchant Bank in Johannesburg. “There’s quite a bit of uncertainty about whether a new structure could result in smaller amounts of money flowing into South Africa, which would have an impact on the rand as the currency has been pricing in aggressive dollar inflows.”
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M&As haven't had so much influence on Rupee, inbound or outbound.

 

[I-G]

ONGC explores another gas field in Tripura

ONGC explores another gas field in Tripura

Updated on Tuesday, August 04, 2009, 00:17 IST

Agartala: The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has found a gas field having estimated 1.5 lakh cubic metres of natural gas (hydrocarbon) at Kalaban in Tripura, ONGC sources said on Monday.


The gas field was discovered after drilling 2,500 meters, the sources said.

After signing an MoU with the Centre last year for the supply of natural gas to the proposed 1,000 MW gas-based power project at Palatana in Tripura, ONGC started an exploration gas field drive last year.

The Palatana power project will commence production by 2012.

In 2008-09, ONGC has discovered two gas wells at Tulakuna in the south district and Khubal in the north district.

ONGC has drilled 130 wells in Tripura since 1972, of which 70 have been found to be gas-bearing.

In Tripura, the ONGC's drilling success rate stands at 2:1, which is better than any state in the country.

ONGC explores another gas field in Tripura

 

[Flint]

Unfortunately, IT and High-Tech industry will only make the existing middle class richer. The only known way to make the majority wealthier is manufacturing.

China did this all through the 90s by manufacturing everything under the sun. India is going nowhere unless we either replicate the Chinese model, or come up with our own way of creating productive mass-employment (not these useless government work yojanas - i.e. dig a ditch and fill it up again)