Experts on economy praise PM Narendra Modi for giving second life to Aadhaar. Others have analyzed World Bank report on India’s GDP and have explained why deregulation of diesel prices is a good move.
Praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving a second life to Aadhaar despite the NDA’s stance against the biometric identity card in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, Surabhi Agarwal in her column in Business Standard writes:
Soon after taking over, the Modi government ordered all government departments to be covered under the Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system. This was meant to push transparency and was the prime minister’s first stamp of approval for the project…Aadhaar will also be used in the Digital India project to serve as a cradle-to-grave digital identity.
A World Bank report said that India’s GDP is likely to expand at 5.6 per cent this fiscal as reforms gain momentum and the growth is expected to accelerate. Giving credit to proposed measures such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) which will give a boost to the manufacturing sector, the report titled ‘India Development Update’ predicted India’s GDP growth for the following years:
India’s economic growth is expected to rise to 5.6 per cent in 2014-15, followed by further acceleration to 6.4 per cent and 7 per cent in 2016-16 and 2016-17.
The report cited the factors on which the prediction is based:
Growth has rebounded significantly due to a strong industrial recovery. Capital flows are back, signalling growing investor confidence as inflation has moderated from double digits, exchange rate has stabilised and financial sector stress has plateaued.
Complementing Modi Government for its decision to deregulate diesel prices, Raghuvir Srinivasan in his column in The Hindu says that both petrol and diesel are politically sensitive commodities but unlike petrol, diesel price changes have a cascading effect across the economy on everything from bus and rail fares to vegetable and fruit prices. Governments have, therefore, been wary of freeing diesel pricing. However, he further explains why it is only the first step in much-needed reform of the oil sector:
What we immediately need is some transparency and reform of the methods followed by the oil companies while setting fuel prices, whether petrol and diesel or cooking gas and kerosene.
The concept of ‘under-recovery’ has to be jettisoned and competition between the different players — public and private — needs to be encouraged. That alone will allow proper price discovery for these economically sensitive fuels.