A New Year Wish
“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right” — Oprah Winfrey
The New Year brings new hope, new cheer, and new expectations of a better tomorrow.
The year just gone by was eventful — demonetisation, GST, Gujarat farm distress were some of the highlights.
Post the GST-induced disruption, and demonetisation, the economy is picking up. There is a new debate on the agrarian crisis, and the kind of reverses that the BJP has faced in rural Gujarat, it’s hoped that the coming Budget will see a renewed thrust on Bharat — more so as it faces as many as eight state elections in the New Year.
Continuing with our tradition at BW Businessworld, we lead with the “2018 expectations” as our first Cover.
In an interview with our deputy editor Suman K. Jha, the Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Bibek Debroy, sounds confident that the economy would have rediscovered its growth-oriented moorings in the new financial year, and would grow in the band of 7 to 7.5 per cent.
Many industry leaders and captains like Sunil Kant Munjal, Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Naina Lal Kidwai, Deep Kalra, Manu Jain, Onkar Kanwar, among others, share the optimism, as they list their own expectations from the new year 2018.
In a related feature, a Businessworld panel of economic thinkers does some crystal ball gazing and looks at 2018 through the prism of their expectations and likely outcomes.
We at BW Businessworld keep the reader at the centre of our universe. Our second Cover — Financial Wisdom 2018 — anchored by consultant editor Aniruddha Bose helps the reader make more informed choices in the financial world. S/he can thus grow richer and smarter while investing.
This issue of BW Businessworld features two corporate entities for whom 2018 would prove to be a landmark year.
The Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India hopes to be the market leader in the two-wheeler segment in the near future, and plans to use 2018 under the new president Minoru Kato to ramp up the India operations. This finds space on our third cover. Deputy Editor Suman K. Jha has an interview with Kato while Senior Correspondent Avishek Banerjee brings you an in-depth story on the group.
Our fourth Cover is on the realty sector. After a slump, partly due to demonetisation, the sector is slated to bounce back in 2018, and we feature one of the jewels in this crown — SOBHA on the fourth Cover. The story anchored by Senior Associate Editor, Ashish Sinha focuses on how SOBHA is looking at virgin territories even as it aims to drive the turnaround of the residential market in 2018.
This issue also has a 2 G follow-up by independent journalist Shalini Singh — who broke the story and has been on the top of it ever since. In one of the two pieces that she writes for the issue, she recounts her own experiences while working on the series.
It’s an eminently readable issue, dear reader.
Do keep sending in your views.
And, yes, wish you a very happy new year!
