By Martin Hutchinson
Contributing EditorMoney Morning

[Editor's Note: When Slate magazine recently set out to identify the stock-market guru who most correctly predicted the stock-market decline that accompanied the current financial crisis, the respected online publication concluded it was Martin Hutchinson, a veteran international investment banker who is one of Money Morning's top forecasters. It was no surprise to our readers: After all, Hutchinson warned investors about the evils of credit default swaps six months before the complex derivatives did in insurer American International Group Inc. Then, last fall, Hutchinson "called" the market bottom.

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India remains a …

by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /Contrary to exit poll findings and widespread expectations of a closely fought race, India's ruling Congress Party - formally the Indian National Congress - and its allies won a clear victory in the general election held in April and May of this year, emerging well ahead of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In all, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won 261 of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha - the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament - and came within eleven seats of an absolute parliamentary majority, while the BJP-headed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured only 157 and the Third Front - composed of leftist and regional parties - captured 80 seats. Meanwhile, the new Fourth Front also fared poorly, obtaining just 27 seats, while the remaining 18 seats went to other parties.br /br /The Election Commission of India has ...

Progressive critiques of India’s recent development prospects are often marked by schizophrenic worldviews – between what is and what ought to be.

Mira Kamdar’s recent piece in the World Policy Journal illustrates this well. By Ms. Kamdar’s account Indians are heading down an inevitable path to doomsday. Malthusian population pressures, resource scarcity, global warming, environmental degradation, industrial capitalism, and political corruption have combined with an inherently fractured society that is likely to erupt in caste, religious, and class warfare, terrorism, and self-destruction. Mix in the recent US-India civilian-Nuclear deal and the presence of unstable neighbors – Pakistan, Bangladesh – along with an aggressive China, and Ms. Kamdar offers up all the ingredients for a nuclear holocaust. The only uncertainty we are left with is: which doomsday will India break into first — internal implosion or external explosion?

And if this is not enough,

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Tata Motors Limited (TTM) said Friday it has decided to move production of the Nano, which it claims will be the world's cheapest car. The companyÂ’s decision to pull out of IndiaÂ’s eastern state of West Bengal was an outcome of unrelenting resistance from a dominant local political party.

TTM was down almost 3% in afternoon trading today. However, consensus estimates for this year have moved higher over the past month to 86 cents from 70 cents.

"TTM" Free Stock Analysis: Buy? Sell? Hold?Zacks Investment Research

At a price of just $2,500 each, Tata Motors Ltd.’s (TTM) Nano was billed early in its development as the world’s cheapest automobile and the only car that was both affordable and practical enough for India’s quickly burgeoning middle class. But the car that was emerging as a bright symbol of middle-class opportunity in fast-growing India could now epitomize something much darker: The human cost of rapid industrialization. Company officials this week disclosed that the Nano might not debut next month as originally planned, because violent protests have erupted at the automobile’s main production site. It’s a conflict that pits traditional Indian values against the country’s rapid industrialization. Designed to target lower-mid income brackets, the Nano will sell for one lakh (100,000 rupees), or just over $2,500 – a price that undercuts Tata’s domestic rivals by about 30%. And ...

Unorganised and organised retail must coexist and flourish in India…

After almost scaring the Tata Motors away from West Bengal, Mamata Bannerjee has now trained her guns on Reliance Retail. Well, Reliance Retail should be used to being targeted by feisty women politicians. Immediately after coming to power in Lucknow, Ms. Mayawati had earlier undertaken a similar exercise in UP.

All this is taking place when behemoths of international retail are trying to enter the Indian market. Tesco has chosen to come with Tatas, while Reliance has tied up with Wincanton. The big daddy of them all, Wal-Mart is coming to India courtesy the Bharti group.

In the September edition of Pragati-The Indian National Interest Review, Prashant Kumar Singh makes significant observations about the confusion surrounding retail industry in India. He rightly notices that-

The debate over retail in India has been fixated on the growth

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Why is Bengal, one of the largest sources of coal in the world, importing coal from abroad?

Long-time reader and IEB friend, Joydeep Mukherji sent us this article with a comment:

The West Bengal government has decided to import one lakh tonne of coal at higher rates to fuel the thermal power plants which have not been able to meet the power demand recently for wet and substandard coal.

The resulting rise in the cost of power would have to be borne by the consumers, State Power Minister Mrinal Banerjee said when replying to a motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition Partha Chatterjee in the Assembly today. (ET link)

This article highlights the lunacy behind the intersection of economics and politics in India. India has the third largest deposits of coal in the world, and much of that is in Bengal. However, India imports coal since it is

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