Showing posts with label UPA government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UPA government. Show all posts

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Stinking Mad Kitchen

Sunaina Panigrahi and Sabita Patil don't really have much in common except the fact that both are married and have kids that are growing up. One is a resident of Odisha and a school teacher. The other lives in Maharashtra and helps her husband in his materials supply business. The first one adores Naveen Patnaik while the latter thinks Raj Thackeray is nothing short of a Messiah. The first one is a Masters in Computer Applications while the latter discontinued her graduate studies when her first kid was born. The two are as different as chalk and cheese when it comes to ideology and world view and personal interests. Sunaina cannot keep her eyes off the idiot box when Big Boss is on air while Sabita tries her best not to miss an episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati.

And yet, both share one passionate feeling: a sense of betrayal and hurt coupled with a deep and abiding anger at Dr Manmohan Singh. The reasons are threefold: tomatoes, bananas and eggs. Or rather their prices. Sunanina says it was routine for tomato prices in her locality to drop to less than Rs. 5 a kilo during winters. " In the last few years, it simply doesn't drop below Rs. 20 a kilo even during peak season. How is that possible. Manmohan Singh is an economist. Doesn't he understand this?"she complains. Sabita is outraged because her kids love omlettes for breakfast and her pocket hurts when she buys eggs. "My husband tells me that India is the largest producer of eggs in the world. Then how come prices per dozen have gone up from about Rs. 20 a dozen to about Rs. 60 now? What is Manmohan Singh doing?" she asks. Both Sunaina and Sabita recently got a Facebook post that claimed banana prices in India were higher than those in America. They don't know if it is fact or not. But they know one thing: inflation has been a curse and they openly accuse Manmohan Singh and his UPA government for this.

Try telling them the following: that food inflation that hurts their family budgets so badly is not entirely the fault of Manmohan Singh. That rising income levels amongst the poor has led to a massive increase in demand for products such as tomatoes, eggs and bananas. It won't cut much ice. Both have a startlingly similar riposte: " If mobile call rates and prices of TV sets can fall every year, why do prices of such daily needs go up every year?" Manmohan Singh is himself a distinguished economist and his core team has many star economists. But can they answer these questions raised by Sunaina and Sabita? The hard truth is: housewives and working wives are very pissed off with the UPA government because it has been a miserable failure when it comes to controlling prices and helping families retain control over household budgets.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

All roads lead to perdition...

UPA government’s record in augmenting its infrastructural needs can at best be described as pathetic, feels Sharad Gupta

India is part of the elite group of countries that have nuclear weapons. It has already sent a mission to the moon and is making big forays into space. Its military might matches any developed country. Yet, it doesn’t have proper roads, modern airports and enough port capacity. Its villages and towns are perpetually in dark while cities face a regular load-shedding. A quarter of its villages don’t have access to basic necessities like clean drinking water and sanitation.

UPA government’s record in augmenting its infrastructural needs can at best be described as pathetic. The national highway projects launched during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure and accelerated during Atal Behari Vajpayee’s tenure, almost came to a grinding halt during the last five years – from 81% during 2004 to 19% in the first quarter of 2009.

Though Hyderabad and Bangalore airports were modernised during UPA regime, they had been planned and initiated before UPA came to power. It is another matter though that Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel ran against the time – laying 2-3 foundation stones for building new airports or upgrading the existing ones – 15 days before Election Commission’s Code of Conduct came into force in February.

The story was slightly better on the power front as India signed the Indo-US nuclear deal last year, ensuring uninterrupted supply for uranium to generate civil nuclear energy. But it would take a long time for the first of such reactors to be imported and made operational.

Out of a total installed generation capacity of about 145,000 MW of electricity in the country, 70% comes from thermal fuel. While 20% is generated as hydro energy, nuclear energy contributes just 3%. The remaining capacities come from non-conventional energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass and tidal waves. However, government plans to add at least 40,000 MW from nuclear sources by 2020. Though the government planned a number of ultra mega power projects with a capacity of 4,000 MW, during the past five years, power transmission and distribution have not made much progress. Financial losses in the power sector are to the tune of Rs.300 billion per year and subsidy bills have been consistently rising. The Electricity Act, 2003, which set into motion the rapid development of the power sector, was also formulated during the NDA regime. Much of the action that followed, such as the National Electricity Policy, also predates UPA government.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.