Things fall apart
Never has the doom and gloom bandwagon been so full. Speeches at annual general meetings are variations on the "things fall apart" theme. Magazine covers scream of a "meltdown" in the economy. Moody's has downgraded the country's rating. And now research outfits have added their imprimatur to the anecdotal evidence. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy as well as the National Council for Applied Economic Research have revised their estimates for GDP growth downwards.

Sanctions hurt US
The moral argument for the sanctions against India was always extremely weak. But the exemption of loan guarantees for agricultural exports from the purview of the sanctions in order to enable US wheat suppliers to bag an order from Pakistan tears the moral fig-leaf into shreds. The US president has tried to justify the exemption of agricultural credits on the grounds that food should not be used as a weapon. This is hogwash. Other countries would have been only too willing to provide the wheat to Pakistan.

Internal `sanctions' against core projects
After incurring the wrath of Uncle Sam, sanctions became a household word in India. But we discovered to our dismay that `sanctions' could be external or internal. Internal? Yes. As days pass by after the budget was presented, more and more ambiguities, clumsy and incomplete amendments to the acts and their bizarre ramifications come to light.

  The Index
  The gloom in the markets lifts
  Liberalisation hurts Bangla firms