The UPA government is like a lamb ready for slaughter. It is neither business friendly nor people friendly. I am waiting for them to prop up Amul Baba in 2014. Too long have they milked "garibi hatao" and "aam aadmi ke saath". Its time for these hypocrites to get kicked out.
DELAYED DECISIONS, SHAKY INVESTORS
Investors, both domestic and foreign, are jittery over the Government's indecision. The inordinate delay in giving approval to the highprofile $9.6-billion takeover of Cairn India has sent a bad signal. The deal has been stalled since September 2010. In the last week of May, a GoM headed by Mukherjee reportedly agreed to grant approval to the Cairn-Vedanta deal without setting the kind of difficult and, according to some, unfair pre-conditions that former petroleum minister Murli Deora had wanted imposed. The findings of the GoM were sent to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) for a final decision. At the end of the GoM meeting, Petroleum Minister S. Jaipal Reddy said that he expected the CCEA to announce a decision in two weeks. Four weeks later, at the time of writing, the fate of the Cairn-Vedanta deal remains uncertain.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, foreign direct investment in the first six months of the year is just one-third the amount received in the first six months of 2010. Incredibly, Pakistan has received more money from foreign institutional investors than India has in the last six months. India's stock markets, in the first half of the year, are the worst performing among the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations. Economic growth for the January-March quarter in 2011 was marginally below 8 per cent. A Business Confidence Survey conducted by our sister magazine, Business Today, with market research agency Cfore (forthcoming issue July 6) shows a sharp decline in business confidence in the April-June quarter compared with the quarter between January and March. A weak macroeconomy characterised by high inflation and stalling growth rates is clearly worrying businesspersons. The "certainty" of 8 per cent growth, UPA's proudest achievement, is under threat.
Says a senior bureaucrat, summing up the state of policymaking in the Government, "
The situation is like India batting at 35 for 9 in a cricket match. We just hope that someone puts us out of our misery quickly. We want to see a new team walk in to bat."
Scams, controversies paralyse UPA's decision-making process : Cover Story News - India Today