governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
Rajan the thinking central banker: photo credit: bloomberg.com Raghuram Rajan, India’s central banking czar, will be history by September 2016. He enjoys unprecedented popularity and near cult status as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Some of this has to do with his youthful looks and fresh demeanor — unusual in a profession peopled […]
Read More Rexit technical brilliance, enter political economy expertiseRutba, an urdu word, means status or honour. In sarkari parlance it equates to the “shock and awe” evoked by a single determined officer. Some of this is larger than life, the stuff that legends are made of- like a single Sikh soldier equaling 1.25 lakh opponents in battle or a Gurkha mowing down dozens […]
Read More The death of “rutba”June 3, 2016 things reach a head in Mathura, a pilgrim town two hours by road from Delhi towards Agra. Lord Krishan’s Temple Mathura. photo credit: easydestinations.net The hot spot is a 200 acre plus public park, occupied in 2014 by a set of criminals and land grabbers, masquerading as social revivalist and curiously, political anarchist associations […]
Read More Violence in Lord Krishna’s townYes, it’s true. Raghuram Rajan is very Un-Indian on multiple counts. Photocredit: live.av.info Raghuram Rajan a youthful financial messiah amidst grey heads Early start First, like Dr. Manmohan Singh before him and unlike every other Governor of the Reserve Bank, Rajan became governor at the “tender”, almost youthful age -by Indian metrics- of just fifty […]
Read More Why Raghuram Rajan is not Indianphoto credit: indiatoday.com. How many 2000 cc plus private diesel cars can you spot in this randomly selected grid lock? Imposing a green cess on large diesel cars is populism at its worst. Less than 5% of private cars fall in this category and they have fairly competitive exhaust parameters because diesel engine technology has […]
Read More Don’t demonise dieselPhoto credit: NDTV.com: Harish Rawat – the unfortunate Congress Chief Minister, sacked by the President of India for failing to fulfill his constitutional mandate to get the budget approved Nothing illustrates the cost of wantonly discarding democracy and handing over the government to unelected officials (Governor) than the case of Uttarakhand. To recap the turn […]
Read More Disaster sans democracy in UttarakhandEveryone loves a royal – especially a British royal, even cynics who claim to disdain them. And why not? There is something reassuringly middle class about being born to the good life and yet having to work hard – saying the right things, looking good, being on time, spending hours chatting with complete strangers and […]
Read More The new royalsWhich of us does not enjoy pulling down the high and mighty? And the thrill is even sharper if these are people who may have breached laws whilst rising to dizzy heights. And so it was with the recent Panama Papers leak which opens a window into the morbid financial gymnastics of the amoral, global […]
Read More Dirty money: Joining the dotsThe curious case of Uttarakhand (a small hill state in north India) shows that getting elected to political office confers powers but no responsibilities. The otherwise placid, hilly paradise was rocked by frenzied politicking in end March, as Congress dissidents lit a fire under their own government, even as forest fires lit to clear shed […]
Read More Politics sans servicePhoto credit: everettlaw.com Weird as it may sound, despite the rhetoric around innovation and private entrepreneurship being key for growth, this is not the consistent message emanating from government policy and regulations. Here are three examples. Ideological neutrality versus enlarging access to the internet First, consider that TRAI caved-in, in February 2016 to the “shrill […]
Read More Mixed signals stifle innovation
Opinion India 