Articles

ONE reason for the sharp rise in grain prices that has hit the poor in the last three years is the stagnation of cereal production, particularly so in the case of wheat. And one important reason for this arrest in […]

MOST of us have been brought up to regard debt as a terrible thing, sad so are very worried at the size of our foreign debt (currently nearing $ 80 billion). Much of this worry is misdirected. Here is a

IGNORANCE about the role of markets and international institutions like the World Bank and IMF is as widespread among right-wingers in the USA as among left-wingers in India. The American right believes that free, untrammelled markets are a good thing

News reports suggest that the Textile Labour Association (FLA) in Gujarat has become the first trade union to embrace the idea that scrapping sick units is the correct way to revive dying industrial cities like Ahmedabad and Kanpur. This is

WITH the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become commonplace to say that capitalism has triumphed over communism. I think this is misleading and inaccurate notion. What has triumphed is the market-driven welfare state, the mixture of private enterprise

There\’s an old saying that the law is an ass, but I never grasped its full meaning till I read the Supreme Court\’s judgement on the right to education. The court was pronouncing on the validity of Karnataka\’s law on

EVERYBODY knows that justice is a basic need. But not many think of justice as an economic input. Yet no economic reform, including the one India has embarked on, can succeed fully without judicial reform. Justice is as essential an

THE profusion of environment writings in the press on the. occasion of the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro has probably confused readers as much as it informs them. They are told one day that poverty is the greatest pollutant.

Atal Behari Vajpayee\’s visit to the US succeeded in consolidating recent gains in US-ties. There are many reasons for the sea- change in relations: The end of the Cold War, collapse of the Soviet Union, bombing of American embassies by

ARE you among those who think that consumer durables cater only to an upper crust of 100 million people or so? Think again. The most comprehensive survey, conducted in 1987-88 by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), suggests