What does the gunning down of Phoolan Devi have to do with economic reform? A lot. The whole premise of economic reform is that the government should stop doing things that can be left to private enterprise (like running steel …
The Dabhol Power Corporation (DPC), once touted as the showpiece of foreign direct investment in India, is now a shut-down wreck. Why? Because it failed the commercial test of satisfying consumer demand. It created too much production capacity (2,144 MW) …
Although the Vajpayee-Musharraf summit failed to produce an agreed statement, many observers claim that considerable progress was made in areas like commercial exchanges or Sir Creek. One draft okayed at the foreign minister level made no mention of Lahore or …
In the run up to the Vajpyee-Musharraf summit, reams of figures have appeared in the media pertaining to Kashmir. Mostly they are about the number of people killed. Yet everybody seems to keep silent on the most remarkable figure of …
The slowdown in the economy and consequential slippage in the tax collection are likely to increase the government\’s market borrowings in this fiscal. In an overall situation, this might not be a good news for the investors, but in short …
Humans love horror stories, which is why R.L. Stine is a best-selling author. So I am not surprised by the popularity of horror stories being invented about genetically modified (GM) foods and cotton. A recent news item says, in apocalyptic …
I recently read a newspaper report about various ministers not paying their telephone, electricity and rental bills. It was a small news item, not deemed to be of much importance. So many Ministers have failed to pay such bills for …
WHEN I wrote two weeks ago in this column about some blunders Enron had made in India, some readers asked if I had changed my mind. We thought you were pro-Enron, they said, so have you turned anti-Enron? I find …
The Dabhol saga goes on and on. Most commentators think that Enron took Maharashtra officials for a ride. This is partly true. But it is equally true that Dabhol is a bad deal for Enron. Enron\’s first blunder was to …
The last Pay Commission award increased the salaries of government staff by almost 2 per cent of GDP, a wage explosion that sent most states deep into the red. Yet a potentially greater problem is the explosive growth of pensions. …
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