Articles

Does democracy help or hinder economic growth? The miraculous growth of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and now China have led many to believe that a benevolent dictatorship is best for economic prosperity. However, recent research by top economists like […]

For both its critics and advocates, foreign investment has usually meant industrial investment. This is a narrow, increasingly obsolete approach in a world which is inexorably shifting from manufacturing to services, in both rich and poor countries. In India, the

It is now the 50th anniversary of the Bretton Woods meeting which created the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Even as the organisations themselves are celebrating the event, there has been an astonishing joining of hands by the

Are intellectual property rights (IPR) good or bad for farmers? A good answer can be found by treating this as a chicken and egg question. Much has been written about the green revolution in grain. But a much bigger revolution

When India embarked on its economic reforms in 1991, leftist critics claimed the doors were being opened for the re-colonisation of India by a new version of the East India Company. They warned that the US multinationals would become instruments

Many young idealists condemn the energy guzzling of our consumerist age, which burns fossil fuels and causes pollution and global warming. Many hark back with nostalgia to the good old pre-industrial days of organic farming. I agree that we waste

Dear Sukumar Muralidharan, I read your article the other day in Frontline magazine. You echoed the standard left-wing line against the GATT accord (popularly called the Dunkel Draft), implying that India should leave the global trading system which has been

Dear Sukumar Muralidharan, I read your article the other day in Frontline magazine. You echoed the standard left-wing line against the GATT accord (popularly called the Dunkel Draft), implying that India should leave the global trading system which has been

The Lok Sabha debate on GATT and the Dunkel Draft was marked by lamentable ignorance of what sovereignty is about. Speaker after speaker complained that GATT would erode the sovereignty of India. In fact, membership of any international group binds

For decades, people have worried that the fruits of economic growth will not reach the poor, and that special efforts must be made by the state to ensure that this happens. Compounding these worries has been the famous hypothesis of