Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar

There is now universal agreement that public health is a basic need for all developing societies. So much has been written about the need for clean water and air, vaccination, and the control of killer diseases like malaria. But there is one public health issue which peole are scarcely aware of. This is illegal abortion. […]

I can buy soap or garments from scores of different manufacurers. But I can get a telephone service from only one supplier — he government. Inevitably, the monopoly supplier is inefficient and callous. The telephone goes dead twice a month, and the size of my bills often makes me feel that some crooked linesman is

So Nikki Bedi and her phalanx of teeth are off Star TV, for reasons she could not possibly have anticipated. Her chat show specialised in mild sexual titillation, which is why she. invited Ashok Row Kavi, the celebrated gay journalist of Bombay, to participate. Little could she have imagined that Kavi would call Mahatma Gandhi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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