The Times of India

After ten barren years, SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation) has finally delivered a baby called SAPTA (South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement). New-born babies in the subcontinent often suffer from malnutrition, and I suspect SAPTA will be no exception. Many folk might think from screaming newspaper headlines that the seven countries of South Asia More >

Dear Mr Manmohan Singh, You have the unenviable task of formulating a budget which sticks to long-term economic sense while accommodating the populist election year. I intend over the next few weeks to give some suggestions on how you can do this. Consider foreign investment. The rural masses know and care little about your deregulation More >

Many secular people will be dismayed by the reaction of some Muslim organisations to Mr Mani Ratnam’s film, ‘Bombay’. It is important to stress that the protests have emanated mainly from a few communal Muslim outfits, and that many secular Muslims are strongly against banning the film. But no prominent body of Muslims is enthusiastic More >

For centuries, people have assumed that the jobs of the future lie in industry. In fact services have long replaced industry as the locomotive of growth in developed countries. In the USA, almost 75 per cent of the workforce is already in services. In no developed country, according to Peter Drucker, will industry account for More >

In the last two decades, Asia has grown rapidly, Latin America has registered spotty progress, and Africa has gone downhill fast. These differences cannot easily be explained in economic or political terms since the three continents faced the same global conditions and received the same sort of advice and loans from the World Bank and More >

Unlike most people, I am de lighted by the collapse of barrings, the investment bank that counts the Queen of England among its clients. Many are dismayed at seeing a venerable 200-year old institution biting the dust. But neither size nor age guarantee competence, and often hide incompetence or crooked-ness ( Barings stupidly allowed its More >

Multinational companies are shifting their factories to Third World countries, whose cheap skills make it feasible to convert them into production centres for the global market. Can India become a global production centre for a burgeoning service industry-higher education? Some will be shocked at the description of education as an industry-they view it as a More >

Eradicating poverty is possible only by raising productivity, employment and wages in rural India. One way of achieving this is to create conditions for India to become a big player in the global production of seeds. Dr MS Swaminathan has repeatedly highlighted India’s potential in this respect, given its cheap scientific and agricultural manpower. He More >

The government’s National Sample Surveys (NSS) disclosed recently that the proportion of people below the poverty line had risen and inequalities increased in the first 18 months of Mr. Narasimha Rao’s rule (see accompanying chart). Immediately. several observers declared that the Congress Party had been thrashed in the Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh elections because its More >

INEQUALITIES have increased after Mr Narasimha Rao came to power in June 1991. The National Sample Surveys show that the share of the top 20 per cent in consumption increased, and that of the bottom 20 per cent decreased, in Mr Rao’s first 18 months. As our table shows, there is no overall trend change More >

CONTRARY to fears expressed in 1991 that the economic reforms would create massive unemployment, there was little change in unemployment in the first 18 months of reform, while more detailed research may show an actual decline in person-days of unemployment. Employment data are now’ available from the National Sample Surveys for 1991 (July-December) and 1992 More >

THE POOR are better fed after the initiation of economic reforms, according to the National Sample Surveys for 1991 (July-December) and 1992 (January-December). The surveys asked of people whether they ate two square meals a day throughout the year, in some months of the year, or not at all. In rural areas, those claiming to More >

Congress sabotage of panchayati raj may have been a reason for voter disillusionment with the party, says Swaminathan S Aiyar. Centralised rule in India has so obviously failed that most observers of the Indian scene, myself included, have long argued in favour of empowering panchayati raj institutions. We also feel it will yield political dividends. More >

Indian leftists who have long wanted to cripple GATT and the World Bank now have improbable allies in right-wing Republicans who have swept into power in both houses of the US Congress. The Indian left sees these two organisations as agents of US imperialism, no less than the Republicans. They may be surprised to learn More >

The Fund and Bank should be seen as advisors and not policy makers, says Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar Indians leftist hold that the standard IMF-World Bank reform package never works. They look at the wide range of countries under IMF discipline. Wherever the reforms have succeeded, the leftists say this was due to factors other More >