governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
Sex is an outcome but also often the cause of inflamed passions. Regulating sex through law has a downside because the adversarial, legal process we follow is pretty poor at establishing “guilt”. The police are so busy lining the roads for VIPs and doing crowd control, that investigating individual crime is a low priority. Shoddy […]
Read More Careful with the eyes and anklesThanks to Bill Clinton and his legal brilliance, the definition of what constitutes a sex offence has become so broad that men and women now need to comply with the strictest code of antiseptic, social behavior. Earlier we all knew when we were crossing the line since the rule was simple. In Rome do as […]
Read More Digit Sex, Lies and False GodsThe Gujarat Snoopgate can play out three ways. In two variations Amit Shah may be guilty. In the third version Modi himself may be the culprit. Amit Shah was either acting, at the behest of Modi, to help the woman’s father keep track of his daughter or was personally interested in the woman himself. The […]
Read More Modi & Kejriwal; adrift sans a “clean” anchorBlame it on Nehru. If it had not been for him, India (U-ndivided) would comprise Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and Bangladesh, though regrettably still not Sri Lanka (Galle and Kandulama are so beautiful!). Now why couldn’t the man have just made Jinnah the PM, who would have been gone soon enough, anyway. Nehru would have been […]
Read More Netaji-Mulayam’s 30/30 India (U) VisionForeigners aiming to live in Delhi must first get acquainted with its culture. It is they who need to adapt. No one, not the Mughals, the Brits, the entrepreneurial Punjabi refugees from Pakistan, the rich but rude, Haryanvi landowners, the clever South Indian Brahmins, desperate Bangladeshi refugees, the skilled Bihari, Eastern UP and Oriya migrants, […]
Read More A Foreigner in DelhiIndia is caught in the quintessential indecisiveness of the fictional, Danish, Prince Hamlet, created by Shakespeare, who agonizes over “to be or not to be”, loosely applied here as “to go or not to go”, to the forthcoming Commonwealth meet in Sri Lanka. Apparently, at issue is only how to deal with the outraged […]
Read More Sending Hamlet to LankaThe Supreme Court has struck yet another blow for democracy by protecting babus from politicians. Not bad in itself, but puzzling, in the context of the larger objective of protecting democracy. Democracy is all about citizens electing politicians to manage the “commons” and regulate the markets. A babu is merely an “ahlu” in the sabzi; […]
Read More Protecting Babus From PoliticiansOnly in India, would a proposal to erect a statue. in memory of Sardar Patel, who oversaw the integration of princely splinters into India, as we know it today, create so much controversy. After all, the poor Sardar only added to the land mass of India, like Mrs. Gandhi, who added Sikkim. He […]
Read More Who Let the Sardar Out?
Opinion India 