The Hindu Business Line : Foreign direct investment

For the last few years, debates on FDI (Foreign direct investment) — the routes, extent, timing potential, and so on — have gripped the corridors of power, the media, the stock market and the industry alike. Bar a few exceptions, there has been no effort to link FDI to actual development.

On the one hand, the government is still deliberating on increasing the FDI limits in life insurance and health insurance — both sectors that are critical to the common man who is finding it difficult to get used to higher healthcare expenses and the uncertain job situation due to increased privatisation.

Conversely, it seeks to rush headlong into allowing FDI into a sector such as tobacco that quite clearly does not require any further boosts in investment. For one, it goes against the government's own policy to curb the use of tobacco and then there is the added spectre of the fast-growing grey market.

In this context, it is interesting to note that the government has for the first time proposed that the FDI in telecom will be linked to the setting up of capacity and not just financial deals that allows MNCs to capture a share of the Indian market.

A holistic view on the FDI that looks at such issues is, indeed, the need of the hour.

Rajiv Ramakrishna

Bangalore

Letters to the editor and contributions can be sent by e-mail to: bleditor@thehindu.co.in

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