The Hindu Business Line : Friday, September 30, 2005

The lending conundrum
RAJENDRA SINGH RATHORE, an organic farmer of Sailana in Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh, wonders why a tractor loan from a bank costs 12 per cent and finance for a car around 9 per cent? Micro-Finance Institutions (MFIs) charge an outrageous 24 ... More

INSIGHT

`We have met with foes that strike beside us'
STRIKE means many things, apart from closed banks and cancelled flights, halted assembly lines and a frustrated common man. In today's context, strike means refusal to work as a form of organised protest. Other meanings that Concise Oxford ... More

PSU

The ONGC stand-off — Should PSUs remain govt departments or behave like corporates?
The ONGC imbroglio has provided the premise for a national debate on the relationship between owners and management of PSUs, a debate that had died a somewhat whimpering death when the focus shifted in the mid-1990s to the problems of divestment p er se. More

POLITICS

Meaningful signal
THE once strident cry of the CPI(M-L), "China's chairman is our chairman, Chinese path is our path" is no longer heard, and not for reasons of patriotism only. The Chinese, and those of the comrades, like the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mr ... More

POWER

Powering reforms through the customer
THE sorry state of the power sector can be judged by energy and peak shortages (9.1 per cent and 12.1 per cent respectively), the plant load factor (71.1 per cent), transmission and distribution (T&D) losses ( 35 per .. More

RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Men, more than material, can bridge rural-urban divide
So much potential remains untapped in rural India. But the problem that haunts planners and economists is the lack of human material to integrate the two Indias. More

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

IMF: A mandate misplaced?
The IMF's recently-released Strategic Review of its activities hardly created a flutter, perhaps because of the limited relevance of the Fund, its lending and its prescriptions. The Review, says K. Subramanian, is based on exaggerated notions of the IMF's ability to foresee and manage financial market risks. But the Fund has not quite been able to work its mandate of `surveillance', and its credibility to predict and prevent financial crises has been in doubt for some years now. More

LETTERS

Beeyu Overseas

Generating growth

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