Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar

SINCE 1991, foreign investors automatically qualify for a 51 per cent equity stake in new investments in 34 priority industries. The government now proposes to increase the automaticity to 75 per cent, and increase the list of industries. It is doing so largely because the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, handling all non-automatic cases, finds itself […]

China has fared better in education than India because it gets more out of less. ECONOMIC reforms matter, but the human resources that take advantage of reforms matter too. China has become the latest miracle economy in Asia, growing at almost 10 per cent annually for more than a decade. But such economic growth could

DURING a recent visit to China, I was most impressed by Ms Yang Moqiou, principal of one of Shanghai\’s top government schools. She is a member of the Communist Party, and proud of it. But don\’t expect her to repeat the old socialist cliches about socialised education for all. She says that all basic education

COMPETITION is a marvellous thing. In virtually all fields, from sports to business, it forces people to strive, innovate and attain new heights of excellence. It is particularly important in business, since excellence here also means a better deal for consumers and a persistent rise in productivity which alone can banish poverty, and raise living

MEDHA PATKAR has not been able to stop the Sardar Sarovar dam from being built, or tribal villages from being submerged. But her dogged agitation has led to Japan and the World Bank withdrawing from financing the dam. Indeed, she has buttressed the campaign of the now-powerful global greens against all big dams. The chances

Are Indian brand names, technologies and designs going to be crushed by economic liberalisation? Will Indian companies become appendages of global giants? So far, we have striven to develop our own technologies and brand names. For decades we \’sneeped at Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand for being mere assemblers of foreign components for multinationals. But after

SOME people ask me why, at a time when there are doubts whether the Prime Minister and h is economic policies will survive, I devoted last week\’s Swaminomics to Karl Marx. One reason is that I have little new to say about Mr. Rao\’s survival chances. The second is that the errors of Marx hold

TEN years ago, the finest brains in the world debated Karl Marx\’s ideas on the occasion of his 19th death anniversary. It is now his 175th birth anniversary, but he ignored as a 19th century fossil. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern rope, it is commonplace to say it

TEN years ago, the finest brains in the world debated Karl Marx\’s ideas on the occasion of his 19th death anniversary. It is now his 175th birth anniversary, but he ignored as a 19th century fossil. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern rope, it is commonplace to say it

JOURNALISTS often repeat the old joke that India has many sick industries but very few sick industrialists. There are cases where it is so profitable to run a sick industry that the owner positively radiates good health. As long as the unit. is profitable, the owner will typically complain about the unreasonable demands of his