After falling for five successive quarters, GDP growth in July-September was 6.3%, up from 5.7% in the previous quarter. Many cheered this as an economic turnaround. I am amused that people now get excited about just 6.3%. How our standards […]

Railway minister Piyush Goyal said last week that the railways would be completely electrified by 2022, phasing out diesel locomotives. Earlier, transport minister Nitin Gadkari decreed that all car production would have to be electric after 2030, heralding the end

India looks more impressive from New York than New Delhi. That explains the credit upgrade to India given by Moody’s, the top global rating firm. India’s rating is up from Baa3, just above “junk status”, to Baa2, and its outlook

Russian hacking into the US presidential election has spurred claims that Donald Trump’s victory was tainted, maybe rigged. Twitter identified 36,746 accounts with Russiangenerated content. Google found 43 hours of election content on 1,100 videos of Russian origin. Facebook estimated

Communists will celebrate the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 as a triumph of workers and peasants. In fact it owed much to a German diplomatic plot, executed through an armed coup by Lenin. In World War I, Germany

The government is rescuing bust public sector banks with Rs 135,000 crore of recapitalisation bonds as part of a Rs 211,000-crore package. RBI governor Urjit Patel calls this “a monumental step“. It could more accu rately be called a decision

Dear Narendra Modi, You protested recently that some people sleep well only after spreading pessimism all round. Rahul Gandhi responded by highlighting global pessimism: India has slipped to 110th among 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index of IFPRI (International