governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
All governments game their performance metrics. Smart governments guard against falling for the make-believe themselves. The BJP stumbled in believing that India had earned an entitlement to grow, faster than China, at eight per cent per year. Well-intentioned measures — to end black money, resolve the stressed bank loans and reform indirect taxes added to […]
Read More Recapturing growth with stabilityBimal Jalan exercises the writer’s privilege to box his reflections between three inflection points. The first is 1980, ostensibly because 1977-79 was the first time the Congress lost power at the Centre. The second is 2000, being the start of a new millennium. And 2014 is the bookend when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National […]
Read More Bimal Jalan reflectsViolent crimes against children are grabbing headlines. The latest is the sexual assault and murder of a student in a private school’s toilet in Haryana’s Bhondsi, near Gurgaon. However, Haryana is not the most dangerous state for kids. That dubious distinction belongs to Delhi, with a crime rate (crimes against children per 100,000 population) of […]
Read More Keeping our children safeRajiv Kumar, the new vice-chairman of the Niti Aayog, has made development of an organic, Bharatiya model of development as his mission. He is likely to encounter three problems in this endeavour. A new, local model of development is doomed from the start in a globalised world First, in a post-ideology world, marked by rapid […]
Read More Will NITI get it’s hands dirty?Mughal – e – Azam is a quintessential Indian story. A benevolent Emperor – Akbar – faces the rulers dilemma of how to discipline his wayward son – Salim, who would rather marry his love even if it means relinquishing his inheritance. It does not help that Anarkali – his chosen one is a strikingly […]
Read More The Mughal with a heartElite concerns are usually disconnected from the ground reality. For the 1 per cent of Indian who live privileged, cocooned lives, the judicial right to privacy created by the Supreme Court yesterday will add yet another layer with which they can insulate themselves from the “barbarians at the gate”. So, here is what the rich […]
Read More Privacy – an elite fantasyIt seems to be raining rail accidents these days, with two in swift succession. The hapless Suresh Prabhu is a good general but an unlucky one. He made sweeping changes in Indian railways (IR) since November 2014 when he became Minister. Most dramatic was his willingness to diminish his “empire” by merging the rail budget […]
Read More Indian Railways: Slow and unsafeSo when does hubris — the corrosive comfort of undiluted power — overtake a government? Conventional wisdom points to three early red flags. First, when routine tasks are ignored for grand ambitions. Second, when party cadres act out of entitlement rather than commitment. Third, when rant replaces reason as public outreach. Has this already happened […]
Read More Is hubris slowing down Modi?BOOK REVIEW India Transformed 25 years of Economic Reforms Rakesh Mohan – edited Penguin Viking 670 pages; Rs 999 Curating 31 essays into a story on India’s economic reforms can be a giant yawn. But Rakesh Mohan, a videshi economist and a veteran of four major government committee reports, is up to the challenge. THE PLUMBING WHICH […]
Read More Well begun is half doneBOOK REVIEW : Reddy, Sheela. Mr and Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage that Shook India Penguin Random House India, 2017. 464 pp. Sheela Reddy has a winner in this deftly crafted and diligently researched work on the life and times of Rattanbai Petit Jinnah. But this is not a racy read to be completed on the flight from […]
Read More The Parsi who abducted Jinnah
Opinion India 