Book Review: India’s infra journey: Growth & Gaps

Tarmac to Towers: The India Infrastructure Story Pratap Padode 2024 Westland Business 373 pages Rs 799/- Pratap Rodode is a financial journalist and publisher of Construction Update, a magazine launched in 1996, followed by Infrastructure Today, Power Today and Project Reporter. This book comes favorably pre-reviewed by industry veterans Nandan Nilekani, founder Chairman, UIDAI, S.N. […]

Disasters kill people & erode development gains.

Climate change science has taught us that human activity is responsible for adverse meteorological phenomenon like unfavourable weather patterns and degradation of geophysical assets like land or underground water aquifers. This erodes the neat distinction, drawn earlier, between natural disasters – earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, subsidence, floods, epidemics- which could only be managed not prevented, and […]

Budget Bounties 2023-24

Our garden is full of goodies come and get what you need. This is what Finance Minister Sitharaman conveyed to the people (and voters) of India in her 2023-24 budget speech. Adding to the ever deepening gift bag that the Modi administration has held out to voters since 2015, the budget not only slashed income […]

Amending the Electricity Act 2003- Getting the regulatory incentives right

State Electricity Regulatory Commissions (SERCs) constituted under state level legislation in seven states from 1995 and subsequently under the Electricity Regulatory Commissions Act 1998 (since subsumed into the Electricity Act 2003) have failed, to uniformly tackle the twin problems of high operational cost and distorted retail tariff structures not reflective of the cost of supply. […]

Being optimistic on India

India has changed. Gone is the earlier hesitation about being coldly pragmatic while keeping the public interest in mind. Foggy Post-Colonial and Cold-War ideological baggage is being stowed away, appropriately. The clear guard rails developed for dealing with the Ukrainian crisis do the country proud—extending principled support for the continuation of the international mediation effort, […]

Indian economy – struggling to reach 2019-20 GDP levels

Fifteen months down the road to economic recovery, the economy is still limping back to the normal circa 2019-20. GDP in the first quarter of the current fiscal year (April to June fiscal year 2021-22) at INR 32.4 trillion (constant terms) is 20.1 percent higher than the same quarter last year- that’s the good news. But it […]

Tamil Nadu needs an economic reboot

Tamil is an ancient language which jostles Sanskrit on antiquity but remains in vibrant, modern use. It is also a cultural identity. Post-Independence, in 1947, the erstwhile Madras Presidency became the Madras State within the Union of India. In 1956, its borders were redrawn to shed the non-Tamil speaking peripheral areas of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, […]

Unraveling fiscal stress

Economists belabour the point that emerging out of the pandemic–induced economic downturn is qualitatively different from emerging out of a long–drawn economic recession. Simply put, it is easier to get back to where you were. Turning on a light switch and flooding a dark room with light instantly is apt for describing what happens once […]

Budgetary provisions matter more than the speech

Finance Ministers have an uncanny way of figuring out what makes the fish bite and neutralizes the sceptics. Nicely rounded words in the budget speech – like phonetic “quick wins” – come in handy to send the roosters crowing a new Dawn. A three pronged paradigm shift in the budget? FM Sitharaman’s salad dressing for […]

Towards a net zero India

The average human lives for 70 years, though women outlive men. A child born over the next five years will still be alive in 2100 when the world tips over into the +2.5° heating trap triggering catastrophic forces of nature – sea level rise washing away entire islands and shore lines, floods from unseasonal rain, […]

	712sdf356 on Trump’s DOGE &…
	Sanjeev Ahluwalia on Putting rural India first
	Bhanupriya on Putting rural India first
	Sanjeev Ahluwalia on Aspirations must be backed by…
	Sanjeev Ahluwalia on Musk storms the tweeters nest…