India wins glorious battle over wicked Americans trying to patent haldi (turmeric) and steal our traditional knowledge. David slays Goliath. Third World beats First World. These were the messages implicit in newspaper and TV headlines last week after India contested […]

Last week, I called for a new look at the version of colonial exploitation espoused by leaders of our Independence movement. That version was misconceived, and so led to misconceived remedies after Independence. India, a great power before the British

50 Years of Lost Morality IN 1947, we believed that India had been impoverished by the British, and that when the British departed, poverty would go too. We believed the export-orientation and capitalism fostered by the Raj were disastrous, and

During the Independence movement, our leaders castigated colonial exploitation fore impoverishing India India. Before the British came, India was one of the greatest industrial and trading powers in the world. When the British left, India was poor and relatively backward.

In the Middle Ages, the Roman church burned books that dared present an opposing viewpoint. Authors who failed to heed this warning risked being burned at the stake. We are not in the Middle Ages today. But anyone interested in

For over 50 years, the World Bank has ignored corruption in its analyses and prescriptions. Billions of dollars of aid have been hijacked by corrupt rulers, yet the Bank has ascribed development failures to faulty policies or bad projects rather

I have never ceased to be astonished at the moaning of groaning of Left intellectuals over the boom in consumer durables. India\’s consumption of such durables is pathetically small by even Third World standards. Brazil (population 160 million) produces thrice

Mercifully, we have a new Information and Broadcasting Minister who is intelligent, decent and clean. Mr Jaipal Reddy has done well to clarify that the new Broadcasting Bill before Parliament is only a working draft, and that he will invite

The new Prime Minister, Mr Inder Kumar Gujral, says that he will give high priority to social justice. Everbody will applaud politely. But he needs to ask why, despite the sworn intentions of party after party over five decades, social

Bihar is an economic black hole, into which all Plan and \’private investment disappears without producing any worthwhile output. In the 1950s, it was an industrial powerhouse, home of the coal and steel industries. Today it is a stagnant backwater.