To appropriate an old quote, when America sneezes, the Indian software industry catches a cold. With more than a three-fifths share (62% in 2018-19) in India’s total software export, any negative development in the American market is sure to affect India’s software industry that grows largely on...
Indian banks have proved to be brave essential service providers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Customers are happy but the banks have suffered severely as the lockdown impacted credit delivery and eroded asset quality. Over the last seven years, banks were cleaning up their balance sh...
Indian agriculture is in distress. Two news items recently appeared in national dailies. One relating to the plight of grape farmers of Nasik in selling their produce and another of the difficulty of farmers in Punjab and Haryana in engaging farm hands for post-harvesting work. These two insta...
Climate change's adverse impact on earth has become a household subject. Countries across the world are facing the fury of these changes in some form or the other – be it drought or storm, be it spread of diseases caused by extreme weather condition or loss of farm yield. What is climate chan...
Even as the world remains busy counting the number of deaths caused by Covid-19, another crisis is fast griping countries. Economic activities have come to a standstill prompting international research organisations to warn of a deceleration in the global economy. An analysis by the UN Department of...
The hottest year so far was 2016. The rise in global temperature and climatic changes have a huge impact on the environment. The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) 2019 - known as the most comprehensive and rigorous assessment on the state of the environment - by the United Nations has warned th...
Businesses cannot be successful when the society around them fails. This adage puts responsibilities on the business community to look after the well-being of the people around it. JRD Tata, the doyen of the Tata group, was more succinct when he said, "If you make lots of money, you must give it bac...
The contraction in consumer spending has touched even the morning cup of tea of an average Indian, pulling down the overall tea consumption in the country. This has put pressure on prices and made the tea industry’s finances vulnerable as it was already struggling with the problem of oversupply. I...
The Indian Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman has introduced a new concept in the Budget 2020-21. Putting together the social and human facets of her government, she has coined a new phrase ‘Aspirational India’ in which all sections of the society seek better standards of living, with acce...
India’s steel industry is on the border of another crisis. The persistent economic slowdown is threatening the industry with a demand deceleration followed by a price fall to put pressure on margins. This is despite the fact that the industry has so far witnessed a steady output growth.The index o...