The Times of India

Energy has converted India\’s traditional foes into energy allies. India\’s GNP will grow at maybe 7 per cent annually in the next 20 years, in which case energy needs may quadruple. Energy security is now an urgent issue. This explains […]

Will foreign institutional investors (FIIs) finance Indian government programmes on education, health and employment? Not a chance, you might think. Yet something of the sort is in the works. Chidambaram faces the classic dilemma (or trilemma) of finance ministers. He

The world\’s biggest capitalist get-together, the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, has started this week. Change is in the air. This is what the inaugural speech in 2035 will sound like. Ladies, gentlemen and transvestites

When Chou En-Lai, Mao\’s foreign minister, was asked what he thought of the French Revolution, he replied: \”It is too early to say.\” The French Revolution soon led to the Reign of Terror, in which the revolutionary Robespierre guillotined scores

On Wednesday, RBI governor YV Reddy spoke of capping or taxing purchases by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) on our stock markets. Finance Minister Chidambaram quickly denied any such policy change, and forced Reddy to retract. Some people fear that Reddy

On Wednesday, RBI governor YV Reddy spoke of capping or taxing purchases by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) on our stock markets. Finance Minister Chidambaram quickly denied any such policy change, and forced Reddy to retract. Some people fear that Reddy

I am a market-friendly liberal. Yet I found somewhat obscene the boom in stock markets after the December 26 tsunami. Anticipating a reconstruction boom, markets drove up the prices of companies engaged in construction, steel and cement. In Indonesia, which

As the death toll keeps rising, it seems certain that the tsunami on December 26 killed more than the 140,000 who died at Hiroshima. A search for culprits has begun, but is misdirected. The real culprit is nature. Ecologists have

I used to ardently support rural employment schemes to reduce poverty. I saw their huge value in droughts, injecting purchasing power into areas hit by income loss. But experience then showed me that such schemes have little long-run impact on

The first six months of Manmohan Singh\’s rule have produced no significant improvement in the quality of politics. But have they produced improved economic policy? Not really. Stock market fears that the government would be captured by the Left Front