Articles

Many people reading about the recent spate of business scandals in the USA may conclude that capitalism is a pretty dreadful system. We have long moaned and groaned about crooked Indian businessmen who inflate profits, hide liabilities, manipulate markets, and […]

Gujarat has now been in communal flames for 75 days. Police firings on mobs has killed almost 200 people, yet not quelled communal hatred. Deploying the Army has not worked. What has gone wrong? I think the problem goes far

The Soviet Union may be dead, but its old anti-capitalist rhetoric lives on, reincarnated as anti-globalization. Street agitators at meetings of the World Bank or WTO still claim that we are being impoverished by the monopolistic power of multinationals. At

The most revolutionary change in India has been the rise of computer software as a world-beater. India is not a miracle economy, but software is a miracle sector. Growing at 40 per cent annually for a decade, it earned $

Doomsters are composing gloomy jeremiads about the death of economic reform, and indeed of the Vajpayee government. Pessimists say it is only a matter of time before the ruling coalition disintegrates. Even if it survives, say others, economic reforms will

Just as the Indian economy—and world economy—are recovering from last year’s recession, trouble in the Middle East has pushed up the price of oil again. It almost touched $ 30 per barrel before receding to around $ 25 per barrel.

Any civilised, healthy society needs  good governance and accountability. Yet  both have deteriorated sadly in India. Our legal system has become a joke, unable to convict anybody resourceful. Those with money and muscle can put the fear of death into

The Monterrey aid summit, organised by the UN to try and double aid to developing countries, hogged the headlines and editorial columns in both recipient and donor countries across the globe. Yet it received remarkably attention in India. Why? Because

Journalists constantly wring their hands over the growing criminalisation of politics, and call on political parties to choose better candidates. Such moral lecturing is vacuous. Criminals are not entering politics because of some inexplicable moral lapse by candidate selection committees,

Dear Dr Manmohan Singh, few people realise it, but the fate of labour law reform lies in your hands. The government wants to amend the Industrial Disputes Act to permit retrenchment and closure without official permission for companies with less