BUSINESS
This is what the curriculum revamp panel at IIT-D must do to fix engineering education
Instead of treating curriculum revamp exercise as an intra-institutional effort, why not stretch and re-imagine engineering education for the country as a whole?
BUSINESS
The moonlighting debate is focused on the wrong end of the pyramid
The real problem is that too many poor people are gigging or moonlighting – because they cannot afford not to
BUSINESS
Banking on real money in the virtual world
As far as Indian banks go, there is nothing one can actually do in the metaverse other than potter around or get some basic information, which can be got in a quicker and easier to access fashion from a bank’s website
BUSINESS
TRAI has a lot to learn from RBI
Any tightening is meaningless without effective enforcement. And TRAI’s track record on enforcement does not engender confidence
BUSINESS
Why the EPFO is right about raising the retirement age
Forget EPFO’s pay-out problems. Planners need to focus on a rapidly aging society
BUSINESS
Are our cities ready for the flexi work revolution?
If one had any doubts that flexi work and work-from-home are here to stay, they were dispelled from the highest quarter in the land – the Prime Minister himself
BUSINESS
Why the current pay cutbacks in IT Inc are bad news for others too
Unless the IT sector manages to come up with solutions to the current slowdown, one could see a sea-change in the employment patterns, as they shift gears towards high value-added services and innovations, while automation and robotisation takes over more mundane tasks
POLITICS
We can’t double farmers’ incomes without leveraging agriculture exports
Farmers can benefit from a sensible agriculture export policy. Instead, exports are held hostage to a shortage mentality and knee jerk reactions to price spikes
POLITICS
India@75: We need a whole new approach to reforms
Reform by stealth is dead. Reform by force is unworkable. We need another way
BUSINESS
The Green Pivot: Can India meet even its revised climate change targets?
The reduced targets are not a cop out on COP26. Rather, they are a more realistic evaluation of what the country can actually achieve by 2030, which is just seven and half years away
BUSINESS
Without India Inc’s help, we can’t fix our education system
Since Indians have a transactional attitude to education — degrees are sought not for learning but to help land a job — once the path to a job is eased, the pressure on the tertiary system will ease. This means more resources can be focused on fewer people to enhance quality for higher order skills, while employers can quickly find talent with basic skills for other jobs
BUSINESS
Animal spirits have turned droopy but the Lamborghini index is soaring
Bloomberg’s animal spirits index for India slipped in June but spending patterns of super-rich show them to be immune to it
BUSINESS
India’s missing affordable housing market is a failure of policy and purpose
Without accessible civic infrastructure like shops, schools, hospitals, and affordable mass transport, many cheap houses are not livable. Which is why buyers are shying away
BUSINESS
How your achaar can fight inflation and save the planet from climate pickle
Indian housewives had long ago figured out the vagaries of the Indian agri-supply market – and come up with their own ways to combat both seasonal unavailability and seasonal price fluctuations
BUSINESS
The TINA factor in working for the gig economy
The nomenclature of informal workers can change from informal to gig but what does not is the urgent need to address their concerns
BUSINESS
India’s green hydrogen manufacturing plans are on steroids. Now for the ecosystem
As our headlong rush into embracing new technologies should have taught us by now, it is unwise to place your policy bets before all alternative technologies have had a chance to develop
BUSINESS
Why Rajiv Bajaj is both right and wrong about EV start-ups
Bajaj is right on the issue of proper regulation and lack of adequate quality oversight among many of the new EV players
BUSINESS
Execution issues continue to dog India’s infrastructure ambitions
A flash report prepared by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in October last year said one in five infrastructure projects was delayed by more than five years, and cost overruns had reached a staggering Rs 4.3 lakh crore.
BUSINESS
How about a preventive health plan for India’s MSMEs?
The Telangana Industrial Health Clinic Ltd is an attempt to plug the gap between the needs of MSEs who are turning or have just turned sick, and what the existing system offers by way of support
BUSINESS
We need a better system to supervise governance at systemically important institutions
Be they market infrastructure institutions like stock exchanges, banks or insurance companies, there needs to be more active review of management actions, at least in some spheres.
BUSINESS
What Infosys’s pay hike bonanza tells us about India’s IT services export model
Rising salaries whittle away Indian IT’s cost advantage; Companies will have to focus on automation, innovation and productization
BUSINESS
A flood of illegal GM cotton underscores India’s policy failures on GM crops
Desperate farmers, faced with ever increasing input costs and newly emerging threats to yields from resistant pests, are voting with their feet and simply planting GM crops, illegal or not. This unregulated mixing of GM foods into the agriculture supply chain has unforeseeable consequences of the environment as well as safety of consumers
BUSINESS
For the poor in India, there’s no money in JAM
India’s lenders will have to transform their mindsets and look at people at the bottom of the pyramid as potential customers, rather than social responsibility statistics to be ticked off in an Excel sheet
BUSINESS
India's IT industry: Global success story or domestic missed opportunity?
It is not enough to say Make in India. We must also consume Made in India. This will not only give Indian businesses the potential to take on global competition, but also give the government adequate leverage when pushing some foreign policy imperatives
