Will the US now attack Iran? Or Syria or North Korea? Learned articles are being written about this, but most are based on foreign policy considerations alone. In fact decisions are taken by politicians with very private agendas. President Bush\’s …
Will the US now attack Iran? Or Syria or North Korea? Learned articles are being written about this, but most are based on foreign policy considerations alone. In fact decisions are taken by politicians with very private agendas. President Bush\’s …
Anybody seeking a brief but expert look at India’s trade performance and prospects should read a new book by T N Srinivasan and Suresh Tendulkar. The title is significant: “Reintegrating India with the World Economy.” We talk about opening up …
Of all the proposals I have heard to abolish poverty, the simplest comes from a friend in an NGO. Why not raise the minimum wage high enough to put everybody above the poverty line? It sounds so simple, elegant and …
The monsoon is about to arrive, and people are anxiously scanning the skies. Two of the last three years have seen poor rains, and the drought last year was the worst for decades. How bad is the hunger caused by …
A visit to Afghanistan is a sobering one. Like most Indians, I celebrated the Taliban’s overthrow. Eighteen months later, the celebration looks premature. In theory, democracy has been restored and reconstruction has begun after two decades of civil war. In …
I write this column from Afghanistan, about an ancient form of banking that has a sordid reputation in India but a splendid one in Kabul. In India, we regard hawala as criminal money-laundering. We think it uses crooked currency traders …
We have always regarded our businessmen as crooks, and foreign companies as more trustworthy, warts and all. The stock markets have always given foreign companies higher valuations than comparable Indian ones, believing that foreign companies are less likely to cheat. …
Computer software is India’s fastest-growing and most competitive industry. The global recession of 2001 sent most technology companies the world over into a tailspin. Yet the Indian software industry kept growing by 25 % annually. This was slower than the …
One of the many conspiracy theories about the Iraq war is that the US could not tolerate Saddam Hussein’s decision to designate his oil sales in euros, not dollars. To prevent other OPEC countries from also selling oil in euros, …
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