MONEY, it seems, really doesn't know any colour, shifting from red to saffron in the space of a few days. Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi should know, for in a dramatic twist to the spiralling Nano-gate mess, he's managed to get the Tata Group to shift its prestigious small car project from Singur to Sanand.
THE lights don't go out in Germany and France until you switch them off. And that's most of what they have in common. Three-quarters of the electricity in France is nuclear; in Germany it's a quarter. France is adding to its nuclear capacity, Germany is committed to phasing out nuclear power altogether.
Their support for the nuclear deal has been explicit and unwavering. Now that India has been allowed to rejoin the global trade in nuclear materials after three decades, big business is licking its chops: it's payback time. Or so it would seem, going by the rash of statements and projections being thrown about.
CORPORATE America is investing millions of dollars in an intense lobbying effort to convince lawmakers in Congress to ratify the Indo-US civilian agreement, fearing it might otherwise lose opportunities to earn megabucks in an Indian nuclear industry poised to open its doors to foreign investments.
INDIA has broken the regional chains and emerged as the new geostrategic force in the world. The paradigm has shifted, the world has adjusted, the rules have changed and the nuclear isolation has ended. That it all happened largely on India's own terms makes the achievement that much more significant.
IT didn't take too long for the warm afterglow of the deal between Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and the West Bengal government to dissipate into a debate over drafting. But then, such devil in the detail could stymie the settlement
SEEN from the harsh, real world of the urban poor, the paper realm of dry statistical models would seem planets away. The irony is, this is an accurate map of the distance from the other end too. After innumerable studies, we still have no fix on the number of urban poor in India.
