governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
There is something universally uplifting about independence — be it for a teenager, a city, a village, a province or an entire country. Coming into your own is empowering. But only if opportunities exist to break free of the inevitably skewed nature of endowments and constraining regulations. The warm feeling around cooperative federalism has faded […]
Read More An opportunity called Independence- use it or lose itIt is foolish to keep doing the same thing to solve a persistent problem. The Narendra Modi-led Union government has internalised this adage and strives to be big-bang innovative, as illustrated by demonetisation to control corruption, although with less than spectacular success. Article 370 – A Gordian knot or fig leaf Yet another instance is […]
Read More Kashmir: Light beyond the Banihal PassWho can imagine the demons in a person’s mind which push him to end his life? Nor can one be privy to the dull pain of the inevitable, unnecessary guilt, in the minds of family and friends — whether doing something different could have prevented it. The pull of family pride Remember the 2018 Rajkumar […]
Read More Coffee King bucklesPradip Baijal is a pugnacious reformer with a ferocious appetite for taking on challenging assignments. This reviewer remembers vividly Baijal, as Secretary Disinvestment in 2002, walking in the sweltering summer heat from the North Block to the hoi polloi car park around the fountains below Raisina Hill, where the taxi, which served as his official […]
Read More Book Review: Containing ChinaThe Union Budget proposal for a Sovereign Bond by India in the international markets might have come a cropper along with its “sherpa”, Subhash Garg, our former finance secretary. Why the rush? It was never apparent why the government chose to announce in the Budget speech this year, out of the blue, almost as […]
Read More Sovereign Bond Issue in “thanda basta”Like him, deride him, the one thing you have to admit about Ben Mezrich is that he has a yen for timing. His book is staged in three Acts – convenient for a future film script- around the angst between Mark Zuckerberg, and Tyler and Charles Winklevoss, the latter being mirror twins, code named Winklevii. […]
Read More Book Review – Bitcoin BillionairesIt’s an ungodly 4 am as our shikara spears through the shimmering beauty of the Dal Lake — the rush of breeze a blessing after an unexpectedly still and warm night. Warmer summers and colder winters are a reminder that climate change, the silent killer, is not far off. A pre-dawn “bargain” A shikara lurks […]
Read More Looking beyond the Kashmiri Fish BowlBudget FY 2020, tabled on July 5 in Parliament, unintentionally unleashed a “whodunnit” type mystery with serious downstream negative fiscal impacts. The snafu was spotted by eagle-eyed economists Ratin Roy, director of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, and Nitin Desai, a previous Chief Economic Advisor, within hours of the tabling of the […]
Read More Budget 2019-20 “malfunction” spoils the showFinance minister Nirmala Sitharaman made history merely by standing up to present the Union Budget on Friday — being India’s first full-time woman FM to do so. True to the forceful style of the BJP, she delivered the speech with zeal and conviction to the loud thumping of desks by the treasury benches with a […]
Read More Nirmala Sitharaman hits all the right buttons for a balanced budgetModi 1.0 was all about learning the ropes of national governance. Budget preparation and execution is a key ingredient. Budget purists cavil that budgets under Modi 1.0 were high on fuzzy motherhood goals and discretionary expenditure but low on schematic, multiplier enhancing allocations. Arun Jaitley’s five years as FM Rhetoric and poetry are part of […]
Read More Budget FY2020 – Marching to a different drum beat