IPA Staff
16505 stories by IPA Staff
UDF On Upswing, But Groupism Takes Shine Off Its Win In Local Bodies Poll
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As the sun sets on 2025, a close look at the prospects of the principal political fronts in Kerala is in order. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) is certainly down, but not out. Its ‘unexpected’ defeat is not an unmitigated disaster its political rivals are...
Year Of Contradictions For The Indian Economy
NEW DELHI: Outgoing 2025 was a year of contradictions for the economy, marked by both resilience and strands of fragility. Even as GDP growth kept “surprising” on the upside quarter after quarter, equity and currency markets failed to mirror this optimism. Benchmark indices—the Sensex and the Nifty—clocked single-digit returns,...
India Inflation Likely To Remain Low In 2026, New CPI Series On Anvil
NEW DELHI: India is preparing to rejig methodology for computing CPI and revamp monetary policy mandate for targeting retail inflation in 2026 after a year of benign price situation due to subdued food cost and GST reduction. Consumer Price Index (CPI) based retail inflation remained in the Reserve Bank’s...
Corporate Lending To Rebound As Loan-Bond Rate Gap Narrows, RBI Eases Norms
MUMBAI: Bank lending to companies is expected to go up in the coming quarters because the difference in interest rates between corporate bonds and bank loans has narrowed. In addition, recent policy reforms by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), including allowing domestic banks to do acquisition financing, are...
Bank Lending To Joint Liability Groups Slump: RBI Data
MUMBAI: Bank lending to joint liability groups (JLGs) contracted sharply in 2024–25, with disbursements declining 58%, reflecting the stress faced by the microfinance sector over the past year, according to the Trend and Progress report released by the Reserve Bank of India on Monday. JLGs which are informal credit...
India Overtakes Japan To Become World’s Fourth-Largest Economy; Govt Says Will Take Over Germany Within 3 Years
NEW DELHI: The Government of India on Monday (December 29) announced via a press release that the country has now overtaken Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy. With a gross domestic product (GDP) valued at $4.18 trillion, India now ranks behind only the United States, China and Germany...
Disturbing Decline Of Diplomacy Across South Asia Bodes Ill For All
By Ashis Biswas Within the South Asian context, a noticeable coarsening of diplomatic discourse among four countries has occurred, following the violent regime change in Bangladesh, a brief encounter involving India and Pakistan and sporadic skirmishes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. A new political alignment, whose contours will be clearer...
Overconfidence, Identity Politics Caused LDF Defeat: CPI(M) State Chief
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has attributed its ‘unexpected’ poor performance in the local bodies elections in Kerala to overconfidence and the big surge in religion-caste identity politics played by the Congress, the BJP and Islamist forces. Analysing the reasons for the defeat, CPI(M)...
Haryana Minister Anil Vij Exposes Rs. 1,500-Crore Work Slip Scam
By Jag Mohan Thaken By exposing the Rs.1,500-Crore “Work Slip Scam” in his own department and recommending for a high-level probe to the Chief Minister, Haryana Labour Minister Anil Vij has landed the CM Nayab Singh Saini in hot waters, who always claims to preside on a corruption-free Haryana....
Brigitte Bardot, The Face That Changed Desire—And Then Turned Away
By T N Ashok Brigitte Bardot, who died at 91, was not merely a movie star. She was an event. Before Madonna, before Jane Birkin, before the age of celebrity-as-performance, Bardot arrived in the 1950s as something both unsettling and liberating: a woman who seemed indifferent to approval. Her...
No Illusions Of Fairness From Recently-Held Myanmar Elections
By Tirthankar Mitra December 28 has come and gone marking the end of the first phase of the three-phase elections in Myanmar, but democracy seems to be elusive. The elections are widely being viewed at home and abroad as a “sham”. Myanmar is in need of peace, democracy and...
Blockade, Aggression, And Jus Cogens: US Sanctions On Venezuelan Oil
By Atul Alexander On December 16, the United States (US) announced measures to block oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. The Trump administration alleges that Nicolás Maduro’s regime is engaged in drug trafficking and human trafficking. The U.S has expanded its naval presence in the region, ostensibly to interrupt...
IIP At 2-Year High Of 6.7 Per Cent In November On Strong Mining, Manufacturing Performance
NEW DELHI: India’s industrial output attained its highest level in financial year 2025-26 (FY26) so far in November, rising 6.7 per cent year-on-year, the fastest in 25 months, fuelled by a spike in manufacturing and a sharp pick-up in consumer goods, even as electricity generation shrank for the second...
Banks Resilient, Bad Loans At Multi-Decadal Low: RBI Report
MUMBAI: The nation’s banking sector remains resilient, marked by strong balance sheet growth while bad loans have declined to a multi-decadal low, a central bank report has said. The gross non-performing assets ratio of banks has dropped to a multi-decadal low of 2.1% as of September 2025, from 2.2%...
Centre Approves Greenlit Multiple Defence Proposals Worth ₹79,000 Crore
NEW DELHI: The government on Monday greenlit multiple proposals from the armed forces to buy or lease defence goods worth some ₹79,000 crore. The Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi, has approved the acceptance of necessity, a technical term that means an in-principle...
Gratuity In Full And Final Settlement May Come Sooner After Job Exit Under New Labour Laws
NEW DELHI: India is set to witness the biggest changes to its labour laws in decades, with the Centre having already cleared four new labour codes and states now preparing to notify their own rules under these laws. The central government last month announced the implementation of four labour...
AI Propels Layoffs In Tech Sector; Companies Focus On Reskilling
NEW DELHI: As artificial intelligence (AI) adoption accelerates, India’s information technology (IT) and start-up sectors are undergoing a period of upheaval marked by job cuts and growing uncertainty over the future role of programmers and coders. Recently, IT industry veteran and Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy said modern...
Rupee Decline May Not Be Bad For Economy Now
By Nantoo Banerjee It does not make sense for India to deplete its hard-earned foreign currency reserves to temporarily protect the Rupee’s exchange value. In fact, Indian Rupee’s downturn vis-à-vis other major currencies has not adversely impacted the country’s impressive economic growth, at least for the present. On the...
