It is official. Prime Minis-ter Manmohan Singh has said that the economy will grow at a rate lower than 6.5 per cent, which was the Budget estimate.

IT IS difficult to describe the passing away of Mumbai’s icon Bal Thackeray, a demi-god to his followers, adequately.

Fighting for justice is in my blood. I have seen my father severely wounded by workers who did not realise he was only wanting to help them. He even lost his job because of this and when the owners offered him a measly compensation, though I was only 14 years old at that time, I told him not to accept it and he didn’t.

The Economic Survey 2011-12, unbelievably, is an exciting document, full of insights into economic and human behaviour that can affect the economy that the earlier surveys often lacked. Said to be Dr Kaushik Basu’s last economic survey as chief economic adviser, it paints a picture of India where the future is brighter than the present and this is predicated on a roadmap that it provides to righting the wrongs in the economy.

Adi Godrej, chairman of the Godrej group, tells Olga Tellis that the most important reform on the table is the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST). He calls this the single most important step after the opening of the economy in 1991.

The Kerala Chief Minister, Oommen Chandy, on Monday criticised the Centre’s ‘adamant’ stand of withholding approval for hydroelectric projects of the state, including Athirapally.

He also expressed a

Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines has landed belly-up – lenders are closing in on him and he is in danger of losing leased aircraft.

The King of Good Times has sent the Centre an SOS. But will the

You can be sure now that lending rates for your home loans, personal loans and car loans will go up faster than they did after the earlier repo rate increases. Following the half per cent rise in the repo rate announced by the Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday, your EMI on a `10-lakh loan for a 20-year tenure could go up by `340. On a car loan of a three-to-five-year tenure, the EMI could shoot up by approximately `1,000.

Home loan, auto loan and personal loan borrowers may not be hit immediately by the Reserve Bank of India raising its repos rate by a quarter per cent on Thursday; till late in the evening bankers had not announced any immediate hike in their rates. But a hike in the lending rates is likely to happen in the near future as the RBI has indicated it

About 5,000 voters belonging to the North Kerala constituency of Manjeswaram are getting ready to travel to their home state to vote in the Assembly elections scheduled for April 13.