Articles

Many things have improved in India since the reforms of 1991, but not the country’s investment rate. Investment is profitable, and corporate profits rose by over 50 per cent last year. Yet, investment refuses to take off, despite many incentives […]

The conventional argument for foreign direct investment (FDI) is that it brings in foreign exchange. The conventional argument against FDI is that it displaces domestic manufacturers. Both arguments are mainly wrong. Above all, FDI brings in knowledge and marketing links

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

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

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.