Trade Reform: Regulatory and Policy Scenario since 2004
NewsYaps, April 23, 2014

By Pradeep S Mehta

There is a need to adopt a more inclusive trade policy by taking into account investment concerns and other major objectives of the National Manufacturing Policy of India, producer and consumer welfare, and other socio-economic objectives of India’s development. That would help the Foreign Trade Policy of India to better achieve its major objectives of export promotion as well as employment generation.. More...

How not to contain the fiscal deficit
The Hindu Business Line, April 08, 2014

By Pradeep S Mehta

The UPA has played around with numbers. This makes fiscal consolidation a daunting task for the new government. The government has time and again shown its proficiency in accounting sleight of hand, when it comes to containing the fiscal deficit. It has painted a façade of a healthy fiscal situation, thereby hiding the structural cracks in budgetary and planning processes. Clearly, the next government will have a tough time in bringing down the deficit, a root cause for several of our problems. More...

Why cross-border trade between Rajasthan and Sind?
The Financial Express, Bangladesh,  April 05, 2014

By Pradeep S Mehta

Cross-border trade between India and Pakistan through the land route has picked up steam after the recent détente. However, much of the same is happening between Pakistan's West and India's East Punjab through the Wagah-Attari border and between the two parts of Kashmir. What is absent is the possibility of trading between Rajasthan and Sind. In the first two decades of independence in 1947, bilateral trade between India and Pakistan was very frequent. According to estimates, out of the total trade between the two countries, 70 per cent of India's imports from Pakistan and 40 per cent of India's exports to Pakistan were channelised through land routes. The trade volumes were significantly high. The reason is simple. Cross-border trade was at full pace before the 1965 hostilities, but it slowed down since then, until trade resumed recently. More...

The road to true federalism
Business Standard, April 03, 2014

By Pradeep S Mehta

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory, and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country," said Justice Louis D Brandeis, Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the US, in 1932. This view forms the basis of the new federalism philosophy in the US that advocated restoration of some of the autonomy and powers to the states , which they lost to the federal government, as a consequence of the New Deal. A key determinant of the role of the states in a federal polity is their participation in the formulation and implementation of critical economic plans. A central plan body usually indicates a stronger role for the central government and vice versa. It is unable to handle the differences among the states in a clear manner. More...