Multinational companies are shifting their factories to Third World countries, whose cheap skills make it feasible to convert them into production centres for the global market. Can India become a global production centre for a burgeoning service industry-higher education? Some […]

Eradicating poverty is possible only by raising productivity, employment and wages in rural India. One way of achieving this is to create conditions for India to become a big player in the global production of seeds. Dr MS Swaminathan has

The government\’s National Sample Surveys (NSS) disclosed recently that the proportion of people below the poverty line had risen and inequalities increased in the first 18 months of Mr. Narasimha Rao\’s rule (see accompanying chart). Immediately. several observers declared that

INEQUALITIES have increased after Mr Narasimha Rao came to power in June 1991. The National Sample Surveys show that the share of the top 20 per cent in consumption increased, and that of the bottom 20 per cent decreased, in

CONTRARY to fears expressed in 1991 that the economic reforms would create massive unemployment, there was little change in unemployment in the first 18 months of reform, while more detailed research may show an actual decline in person-days of unemployment.

THE POOR are better fed after the initiation of economic reforms, according to the National Sample Surveys for 1991 (July-December) and 1992 (January-December). The surveys asked of people whether they ate two square meals a day throughout the year, in

Congress sabotage of panchayati raj may have been a reason for voter disillusionment with the party, says Swaminathan S Aiyar. Centralised rule in India has so obviously failed that most observers of the Indian scene, myself included, have long argued

Indian leftists who have long wanted to cripple GATT and the World Bank now have improbable allies in right-wing Republicans who have swept into power in both houses of the US Congress. The Indian left sees these two organisations as

The Fund and Bank should be seen as advisors and not policy makers, says Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar Indians leftist hold that the standard IMF-World Bank reform package never works. They look at the wide range of countries under IMF

Foreigners have stopped asking Whether the economic reforms since 1991 are reversible, and instead tend to make gung-ho statements about India becoming the next Asian tiger. Some already regard Mr Narasimha Rao as Deng Xiaoping Jr. They should look at