Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar

Gandhi Jayanti this year will mark the 125th birth anniversary of Mahtama Gandhi, the father of the nation. What would he have thought of the liberalisation of the economy?? I am certain he would have welcomed it, since he was a committed liberal, firmly opposed to intrusive government. Many politicians and intellectuals have fraudulently called […]

The Cairo population conference is a good occasion to announce some good news. India is currently enjoying a major breakthrough in curbing population. Most Indians will find this incredible. Despite many decades of family planning, the country\’s population has been growing steadily by around 2 per cent per year since independence, and cynics believe that

The Cairo population conference is a good occasion to announce some good news. India is currently enjoying a major breakthrough in curbing population. Most Indians will find this incredible. Despite many decades of family planning, the country\’s population has been growing steadily by around 2 per cent per year since independence, and cynics believe that

Does democracy help or hinder economic growth? The miraculous growth of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and now China have led many to believe that a benevolent dictatorship is best for economic prosperity. However, recent research by top economists like Mancur Olson, John Williamson and Surjit Bhalla (reviewed in a recent issue of The Economist)

For both its critics and advocates, foreign investment has usually meant industrial investment. This is a narrow, increasingly obsolete approach in a world which is inexorably shifting from manufacturing to services, in both rich and poor countries. In India, the share of services in GNP is almost double that of manufacturing, and still rising. Without

It is now the 50th anniversary of the Bretton Woods meeting which created the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Even as the organisations themselves are celebrating the event, there has been an astonishing joining of hands by the far right, far left and deep greens, calling for the abolition of the two organisations.

Are intellectual property rights (IPR) good or bad for farmers? A good answer can be found by treating this as a chicken and egg question. Much has been written about the green revolution in grain. But a much bigger revolution has taken place in the production of eggs and chickens. The per capita availability of

When India embarked on its economic reforms in 1991, leftist critics claimed the doors were being opened for the re-colonisation of India by a new version of the East India Company. They warned that the US multinationals would become instruments of the US foreign policy to subjugate India. During Prime Minister Mr Narasimha Rao\’s visit

Many young idealists condemn the energy guzzling of our consumerist age, which burns fossil fuels and causes pollution and global warming. Many hark back with nostalgia to the good old pre-industrial days of organic farming. I agree that we waste energy terribly and pay scant regard to environmental damage, and badly need to reverse both

Dear Sukumar Muralidharan, I read your article the other day in Frontline magazine. You echoed the standard left-wing line against the GATT accord (popularly called the Dunkel Draft), implying that India should leave the global trading system which has been signed by 126 countries. Your main objections were that (a) GATT represents an unequal trading