governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
Creativity blooms during periods of extreme turbulence. One such example is the “Doing Business” index, which was initiated in 2003, in the aftermath of the dotcom boom-bust of 2000-2004. Back then, state led development had decisively given way to a preference for an open economy, competition, markets and private enterprise. The Doing Business index benchmarked […]
Read More How creative is the Indian economy?India’s poor were delighted yesterday, to read in the newspaper, that India’s Executive Director to the International Monetary Fund – the celebrated data scientist Surjit Bhalla, assesses India’s poor to have reduced from 21.2 per cent in 2011 to just 6.3 per cent by 2018. He also asserts that the fastest reduction in poverty happened […]
Read More Ending poverty statisticallyThe RBIs decision to hold the repo-rate (the administered rate at which the RBI lends money to banks) at 5.15 per cent for the second time in four months, mirrors the timidity of the Finance Minister in the budget proposals presented for FY 2021. Both are twins born of the same mother of policy paralysis […]
Read More RBI chickens out of stoking growthDelhi has yet to overcome its Raj inheritance. The capital exudes the complacence of satiated imperialism, decades after the rest of the country has been democratized. The most egregious twin dogmas Two particularly deep-seated Raj dogmas plague Delhi. First, that India has an entitlement to lead the world and second, that our long-term foe is […]
Read More India’s Raj inheritanceIt’s scarier going downhill than climbing to the top. Whilst on the way up, the heavyweight of inertia is known and hence manageable. Going downhill, inertia accelerates descent in unknown ways. The economy is no different. Flab (public sector banks), poorly maintained brakes (uncompetitive private firms), worn gear cogs (lack of structural reforms) or inadequate […]
Read More Indian Economy – The great slideLike 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 BillionairesThe 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 solutions