Articles

Industrial and export growth are booming, but looming infrastructure shortages mean the boom cannot be sustained. Power shortages are widespread, overloaded ports cannot cope with demand, the railways are unable to carry desperately-needed goods, roads are overcrowded and slow, airports are clogged, telephones work badly. Without a boom in infrastructure, we cannot sustain a boom […]

A liberal society is based on rules applicable to all, not on the whims and discretion of rulers. Payoffs in return for favours are ant-liberal. Liberalisation is not simply about delicensing an activity or two. It is about empowering citizens by empowering citizens by replacing government diktat by competition within a set of fair rules.

Businessmen and NGOs sometimes ask me what they can do to improve the deplorable state of education in India. I believe that primary education must and can be done only by the state. But industrialists d NGOs (who get plentiful foreign funding today) can play an important supplementary role. Many businessmen have set up schools,

At a time when the Planning Commission says 54 million people have risen above the poverty line, state governments seem to have fallen below it. Many can barely pay employees\’ salaries, some not even that. In consequence, urgently-needed investment in primary education, infrastructure and rural development is not taking place. The states say they have

Last week, I described the emerging war between generations in the West. The western welfare state taxes workers to finance pensions and health care for the aged. But the ratio of the aged to the workforce is rising relentlessly, and will increase fourfold in some countries by the year 2040. So either taxes per worker

A great new social struggle is emerging in the world. The old struggle was between workers and capitalists. The new struggle is between the workers and the aged. Forget about class wars, we are now in a war between generations. Just look at the strikes paralyzing France, the good showing of the Communists in the

One reason why India remains mired in poverty is that the political class gets worked up if anybody makes an excess profit of Rs 100 crore, but does not turn a hair if the public sector wastes Rs 100,000 crore. Nowhere is this clearer than in the latest ruckus over telecom licences. Opposition parties accuse

For all those following the debate on poverty trends since the reforms of 1991, there is encouraging news from the National council of Applied Economic Research. Its latest consumer survey for 1993-94 shows that: The proportion of low-income households has diminished after the economic reforms of 1991, a continuation of the declining trend evident since

The Parliament has witnessed a furore over Mr Sukh Ram\’s attempts to favour Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd (HFCL) in basic telephone licences. The Opposition parties have declared that this is a Rs 20,000-crore scam, and plan to make it part of their election platform. This estimate looks inflated. And Opposition parties are wrong in singling

It looks as though the Enron drama is going to have a happy ending. Many details of the re-, negotiation are secret, but certainly the total project cost has been stashed, its size has been expanded, and the levelised power tariff may plummet to just Rs 1.89 per unit, against the earlier Rs 2.62 per