Articles

The old left is smiling. It is gleeful about the economic disaster in East and South-East Asia; about the collapse of Russia; about the strong possibility of Latin America becoming the next domino. Even the USA, whose booming economy once […]

Russia today proves the point that economic reform cannot take place in the absence of governance. When governance collapses, no mount of foreign money can save a failed state like Russia. Quick-fixes like those attempted by the IMF will fail

For years, leftists have criticised the Washington Consensus, seen as the joint manifesto of the World Bank, IMF and USA. The Consensus, according to the left, says \”Liberalise everything, create a minimal state, be tough in fiscal and monetary matters.\”

Indian politics is about quotas. We have demands for a quota for Parliamentary seats for women, a sub-quota for backward caste women, job reservations for backward Muslims and Dalit Christians. Now, granting reverse discrimination is a form of social progress,

I was recently in Nepal, and met many of its promising young economic journalists. None of them was gung-ho about the country’s future. Most felt that Nepal had deep structural problems that were difficult to overcome. They cited three main

The conventional wisdom in development economics now holds that economic success occurs only where the state does an excellent job in non-market areas like education, health and rural development. Bangladesh has come up with an original alternative. It has a

A tax on forex transactions may prove a godsend to the finance minister, should the sanctions force him to have a supplementary budget, say Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar The Asian currency crisis has revived interest in the Tobin tax, a

Finance ministers, industrialists, bankers all pay lip service to price stability. Yet they all gain so much from inflation that they have institutionalised it. In the 1950s, inflation was negligible. But since the mid-1960s it has averaged 8 to 9

After its nuclear tests, a triumphant Bharatiya Janata Party proclaims that saffron means toughness, courage, unwillingness to be eked around by mighty foreigners. It means standing up for your principles regardless of the cost of sanctions. We demand recognition as

Sorry folks, but Pakistan has spoiled our nuclear celebration. You thought our bomb made us a great power on par with the USA? No, we remain on par with Pakistan. You thought we had become high-tech geniuses? Sorry, we are