Banking and Finance
Major moves on micro credit
BY ADVISING banks to provide micro finance to the poorest in an effort to tackle poverty, the RBI is perhaps the first central bank to issue official guidelines on micro-credit.
Economy
Vision 2020 -- Poor local governance and rattling coffers
Poor governance and housekeeping are taking off bulk of the resources, leaving local bodies with little to provide quality goods and services. Local bodies must smarten up -- especially by offering quality services -- and also convince people that they
can be trusted with money, says P. V. Indiresan.
Editorial
And miles to go
THE UNITED NATIONS Development Programme's (UNDP) pat for India for improving its human development record and praise for economic reforms should come as a much-needed morale-booster to the policy-makers. As per the UNDP's Human Development Report (HDR)
2000, giving compilations for 1998, India has moved up four notches to the 128th rank among 174 countries evaluated, with the country's human development index (HDI) improving to 0.563 from 0.545 in the preceding year. What is more, the HDR compliments I
ndia for putting human rights at the core of its development strategies.
Fertilisers
Fertiliser sector
WHILE debating the fulfillment of India's obligations under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), several measures have been suggested. The fertiliser subsidy will have to be drastically reduced; controls on pricing and distribution of urea will have to go
; the RPS will have to be abolished; and higher concession support to domestic DAP will have to give way to uniform concession on both domestic and imported material. The
Food & Dairy Products
Greying of India's White Revolution
PUNJAB'S dairy sector is in a crisis. A flood of imports of highly subsidised milk and cream from Denmark and Norway has created an uproar from domestic producers. Such has been the hue and cry that the Chief Minister, Mr. Prakash Singh Badal, was forced
to rush to New Delhi to plead with the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to raise import duties in a bid to stop the dumping of milk on Punjab.
Miscellaneous
World Wide Web
IS THERE a geek or nerd or hacker or surfer so dumb, that he will not recognise the magical threesome pointing to the world wide web? Some, admiring its universal reach, expand it to `world without walls' or simply `world wide wow'. Many, though, who fin
d their experience in accessing websites, or downloading freebies maddeningly frustrating, are driven to dub it as an endless `world wide wait'.
Political freedom and growth
THE ADMINISTRATOR of the United Nations Development Programme, Mr. Mark Malloch Brown, says in the foreword to the Human Development Report 2000: ``...human rights are not, as has sometimes been argued, a reward of development. Rather, they are critical
to achieving it. Only with political freedoms -- the right for all men and women to participate equally in society -- can people genuinely take advantage of economic freedoms. And the most important step towards generating the kind of economic growth nee
ded to do that is the establishment of transparent, accountable and effective systems of institutions and laws. Only when people feel they have a stake and a voice will they throw themselves wholeheartedly into development. Rights make human beings bette
r economic actors.''
