governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
The Pulwama massacre illustrates how porous our security architecture remains to domestic and external threats. We live in a tough neighbourhood. The geo-politics of containing the enemy through a simmering, low-level, proxy war of attrition is a fine art in South Asia and its near abroad. More boots are no substitute for hi-tech surveillance and […]
Read More Unlock India’s growth potential & make us more secureIndia’s elites – the top 0.1 per cent of families, who only shop overseas and have grown fatter the fastest – have a visceral fear of foreign buyouts. The average Indian couldn’t care less – they only look for lower prices and better quality. There are no sari clad Westestern CEOs India’s politicians, particularly in […]
Read More Stopping foreigners from owning Indian retail e-commerceSo, what are we trying to say when we repeatedly stress that 65 per cent of our population is below 35 years of age? It is not as if we are growing any younger. In fact we are ageing. And that is a good thing because it is an outcome of development. India became younger […]
Read More Grow up well IndiaSafeguarding your privacy from government and the use of your data by companies without asking you or paying you explicitly, are current concerns, even in under developed India, where more than one half of the population remains effectively unhooked to the internet because of patchy service in low population density areas. The proposed solutions are […]
Read More Data protection – new challenges but lame solutionsRahul Gandhi alleged, during last week’s doomed-from the-start no-confidence motion in Parliament, that corruption in the 2016 agreement signed by the Narendra Modi government to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France had forced defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman to backtrack from her assurance to disclose details of the price of purchase. Parliamentary subterfuge – unnecessary, […]
Read More Secrecy, privacy and property rightsTelecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), was once the gold standard for “light touch” regulation, in stark contrast to electricity regulators, who continue today, to be stuck in byzantine rate of return regulation and administering cross subsidy between classes of users. TRAI loses industry focus TRAI has changed since. Consider that on November 29 it […]
Read More TRAI should junk net neutralityRajesh and Nupur Talwar were having an impromptu pre-birthday celebration for their daughter Aarushi, at their Noida residence on the evening of May 15, 2008. Their live-in, trusted house-help Hemraj was about, as usual. Some time before 6 am the next day, both Aarushi and Hemraj were dead — the victims of horrific violence inside […]
Read More Bad police work or “perfect” murdersElite 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 unsafeGoing cashless is a good idea. For the government, the biggest gain is an easy audit trail to assess individuals and businesses to tax and to ferret out illegal transactions like the financing of crime, terror, smuggling and drugs. For individuals, plastic (payment cards) and e-money provides far greater security, despite the risk from cybercrime. […]
Read More How to junk cash and when