Swaminomics

There was much cheering last week when our cricket Test team demolished New Zealand . Yet the truly great Test and victory was in the Gujarat High Court, which imposed stiff sentences on perpetrators of the Naroda Patiya massacre of 2002. India’s institutions and civil society defeated a state bent on protecting the guilty. This More >

Opposition parties want Manmohan Singh’s head for supposed corruption in 57 coal blocks that were allocated, not auctioned. The government is under pressure to cancel the allocations. That would be politically, legally and economically wrong. Politically, it will look like a confession of crookedness. Neither the CAG nor anybody else has produced any evidence of More >

Indian politics today seems driven less by politicians and more by the Supreme Court and Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). What does this imply for Indian democracy? The answer is that we are seeing a revolt by India’s institutions against a corrupt, callous state. An implicit political conspiracy ensures that all parties can, with impunity, More >

The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on coal block allocations highlights the mess in the coal sector, but has led to very faulty interpretations of what exactly has gone wrong. The report exposes the pitfalls of ministerial discretion to allocate coal blocks. Market-based procedures like auctions, which would eliminate bribes and increase revenue, More >

When India’s GDP growth declined to 6.5% last year, some shrugged it off as an aberration. But drought and industrial stagnation have led financial analysts like CLSA to slash their growth estimate for 2012-13 to 5.5%. Citibank fears it could fall to 4.9%. Consumer inflation remains high. Don’t blame just the weather and global conditions, More >

Dear Anna Hazare, Frustrated by your failure to draw large crowds or sway Parliament, you have decided to convert your India Against Corruption movement into a political party. This is madness. Please abandon the idea. A mass movement can flourish on a single issue like fighting corruption. A single-issue movement can draw support from many More >

The monsoon has failed badly this year as it did in 1965. But it’s little more than an inconvenience this year, whereas in 1965 it was a monstrous calamity. The drought-proofing of India is a success story, but one widely misunderstood. India in the 1960s was pathetically dependent on US food aid. Even in the More >

Nobody believes that agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has resigned because of policy differences. He is miffed at being denied no 2 status in the Cabinet. He may also be preparing for life after UPA 2 – the next general election may give him a chance of becoming PM at the head of a coalition of More >

Angered by crony capitalism in India and the power of the top 1% in the West, some analysts favour the so-called Beijing Consensus, or China’s model. Sorry, but China has as much cronyism as other countries. A recent study in Financial Times shows that relatives galore of Chinese politicians have become millionaires. The “princelings”, as More >

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has become finance minister too. His first spell as finance minister (1991-96) was a heady period of economic reform, converting India from an international beggar into a potential superpower. Will his second spell as finance minister produce another courageous set of major reforms? Not a chance. Singh has been pretty powerless More >

Many rich countries have struggled for three years to emerge fully from the Great Recession of 2008-09. Alas, the world is slipping into a new recession. No global authority has dared say so, but the writing is on the wall. A classic lead indicator of a global recession is a crash in commodity prices, which More >