It's About Politics
The limits on Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha's budget this year are political. He has the prescription to put the economy on a high growth track, but hampered by vested interests, vote-bank politics and stubborn opposition parties, he is unlikely to deliver.

The Rot in Farming
Falling prices, stagnating production and diminishing returns are brewing an unparalleled crisis in farmlands across India. Ironically, the alarming situation has arisen despite an unprecedented 12 consecutive normal monsoons.

Creeping Paralysis
Doubts over Keshubhai Patel's fitness to rule are growing after his government failed to provide basic relief like tents to those affected by the earthquake. Despite having speedily restored electricity and water, which earned praise from some international agencies, criticism over Patel's poor marshalling of resources continues.

Artless Artistry
The festival tried to exhibit the widest selection rather than the best, making it a disappointing show.

Stillness of Change
The legendary bamboo curtain is lifting to reveal that Myanmar isn't quite the "fascist Disneyland" it is made out to be. The winds of change have brought back English as the medium of instruction and Aung San Suu Kyi is talking to the military. After prolonged isolation, Yangon wants to face the world, but on its own terms.

Making It Happen
John Buchanan gives an exclusive insight into what it takes to coach the world's most successful team. He also enumerates what
he feels will be the Indian strengths that the Aussies
will have to watch out for.

Strategic Partners
As emphasis shifts from relief to rehabilitation, Care Today is selecting regions to focus on and NGOs to help it channelise aid. The involvement of victims is integral to the plan so that their dignity remains intact.

It's budget time again. The past few weeks have seen the usual jockeying and lobbying by special interest groups to get their pound of flesh. There are times in the state of a country when politics is set aside and economic logic holds sway. In early 1991, in the wake of the Gulf war, as India battled negative industrial growth and foreign exchange reserves were reduced to a week's imports-the equivalent of not knowing when the next lunch was coming from-the then prime minister Chandra Shekhar sold gold from the nation's reserves to pay for imports. Many saw it as blasphemous, but it made economic sense. His successor, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and finance minister Manmohan Singh inherited an economy struggling in the throes of a balance-of-payments crisis, mounting debt and industrial stagnation, and unhesitatingly shed their socialist beliefs and opened the economy in the face of stiff political opposition. Necessity was definitely the mother of liberalisation in India.

Our covers on economic slowdown

Today, the market economy is the way of the world, and there is little dispute about what needs to be done. However, in India today the problem is not about economic direction or prescriptions, but political expediency, and that is the reason behind the headline of our cover story this week, "It's politics, stupid!" The examples are numerous and damaging. For decades, no government has had the guts to tax agricultural income, fearing electoral defeat. This has persisted even as, since Independence, the numbers engaged in farming have fallen from over 80 per cent of the workforce to about 55-and dropping-and the chunk of wealthy farmers has grown. The railways need to increase passenger fares but won't because it could cost minister Mamata Banerjee her future in West Bengal. Says Associate Editor Rohit Saran, who put the package together with our political-beat veterans, Associate Editors Farzand Ahmed and Amarnath K. Menon and Special Correspondent Lakshmi Iyer: "Issues like divestment, reservation for small-scale industry and tax cuts still remain the holy cows of Indian politics."

For years, we at India Today have argued that there can be only one operative phrase, "It's the economy, stupid!" More than one successful country has realised good economics makes for good politics. It's time India did as well.

(Aroon Purie)

MetroScape
Charitable Mood
In the backdrop of murky allegations about underworld connections, philanthropy by the Bollywood badshahs comes a little more easily.
more...

Looking Glass

Delhi: Lifestyle Store

Delhi: Film Festival

Mumbai: Restaurant

The Indian Navy's International Fleet Review was a fine effort at naval diplomacy which the Government would do well to build on, writes INDIA TODAY's Principal Correspondent Sandeep Unnithan
in Despatches.

"The only obvious competition is in bhangra," say the Pakistani duo of the music group, Strings, in an exclusive interview with INDIA TODAY's Sonia Faleiro.
Interviews.