The Times of India
Why babuji goes too slow
Mar 9th
Politicians make policy, bureaucrats implement them. Trust and harmony between the two can produce amazing results. If trust and harmony decline, so do decision-making and economic performance. Bureaucrats can function brilliantly if they get clear signals from their political bosses, and assurance that being decisive (which typically includes short-cuts through a jungle of rules) will More >
WTO becomes India’s protector, not predator
Mar 2nd
When the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in 1995, critics protested that India must not join this vehicle of US imperialism, whose tough patent rules would ruin India’s agriculture and pharmaceutical industry. They could not have been more wrong. Both Indian agriculture and pharma have flourished under WTO rules. And today, the WTO is More >
Why Sonia’s right-based approach was rejected by the aam aadmi
Feb 23rd
Opinion polls predict the worstever defeat for the Congress in the coming election. The party swore by the aam aadmi for a decade, promising him succour through a rights-based approach . Alas, the aam aadmi rejects this categorically. In 2009, Sonia Gandhi created the powerful National Advisory Council with the top names in the NGO/activist More >
FIR against Moily? As absurd as one against Kejriwal
Feb 16th
Aam Admi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal has filed an FIR (first information report) accusing petroleum minister Veerappa Moily of conspiring with Mukesh Ambani to raise the price of natural gas, bestowing billions of windfall profit on Reliance Industries Ltd. Now, the Ambanis and Congress politicians have committed a thousand sins over the years. I will More >
Ambedkar vs Gandhi: The risks of village empowerment
Feb 9th
January 30, the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, drove home the growing irrelevance of the father of the nation. In West Bengal, not a single state cabinet minister attended the formal ceremony held by the Governor. In Mumbai, mayor Sunil Prabhu clean forgot about the usual ceremony, and blamed the lapse on the bureaucrat who More >
AAP can take a leaf out of Amartya Sen’s book
Feb 2nd
Many analysts and businessmen fear that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), dominated by socialists and Marxists like Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, is an extreme Left party. These fears are overblown. The AAP has appointed a seven-member committee to formulate its economic policy. This includes libertarian economist Laveesh Bhandari and business honchos like Meera Sanyal More >
The case for offshore airports
Jan 26th
Mumbai’s proposed fourth airport at Navi Mumbai, essential for future traffic, is in trouble. Huge increases in proposed compensation to landowners have raised the project cost to Rs 14,000 crore, almost five times the initial estimate. Some villagers have refused to accept even monumental compensation (in the form of developed land with a floor space More >
How supposed job losses can actually mean rising prosperity
Jan 19th
Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal have one thing in common. Both have said “no” to majority foreign direct investment in retail markets. Modi’s rationale is obvious : the BJP has always been the party of small traders, and so he is backing the aam bania over the aam admi. But why has the Aam Aadmi More >
Use wiki-ways to improve accountability
Jan 12th
Dear Arvind Kejriwal, Your Aam Aadmi Party has asked the public to suggest what should be in its national manifesto. This suggests a remarkable openness.You will find thousands of suggestions attractive, especially those appealing to one vote bank or another. Please ignore all except those relating to the one thing for which you have been More >
Time to think the unthinkable: Kejriwal as PM?
Jan 5th
The unthinkable happened in 2013: Arvind Kejriwal became CM of Delhi. What’s the most unthinkable thing that could actually happen in 2014? Kejriwal could become prime minister of India. Readers may laugh incredulously at the very suggestion. But the revolutionary success of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi election shows it’s time to abandon More >
Muzaffarnagar offers chance to rejuvenate Congress
Dec 29th
Dear Rahul Gandhi, When you visited the refugee camps in Muzaffarnagar district last week, you advised the refugees to return to their village homes, saying failure to do so would mean victory for the communalists who started the Hindu-Muslim violence. You also spoke of the need for peacemakers to heal communal wounds. I visited the More >
AAP can scale up like JP, VP Singh movements
Dec 22nd
The recent state elections revealed a big Narendra Modi wave in Rajasthan (vote share up 12 percentage points), and to a lesser extent in Madhya Pradesh. But in Delhi, an AAP wave swamped the Modi wave. The BJP’s vote share actually dropped 2 percentage points. Can the AAP effect beat the Modi effect in enough More >
Why Congress should ditch desperate populism before 2014 elections
Dec 15th
Having been smashed in the recent state elections, how will the Congress try to recover ground before the general election in May 2014? Fixers within the party may argue for new populist giveaways. Why not have another farm loan waiver, of the sort that helped win the 2009 election? Why not steal some ideas used More >
Global slowdown exacerbates India’s follies
Dec 8th
At last week’s ET Now conclave, finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram defended India’s poor growth performance, ascribing it mainly to a global slowdown. Many will dismiss this as the whining of a ruling party that has messed up badly and may suffer its worst-ever drubbing in the 2014 general election. Chidambaram has been unlucky to be More >
There’s a Modi effect, but not a Modi wave
Dec 1st
Shortly after the Gujarat state election, Swaminomics argued that Narendra Modi would not be able to make this a launching pad for the prime ministership. I need to qualify that judgement heavily after a recent tour of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to cover the state Assembly campaigns. When asked what the main issues were in More >
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