governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
What is common between the ongoing events in Crimea (2014), the British action against Argentina in the Falklands under Maggie Thatcher (1982), the war against Tamils in Sri Lanka (1982 to 2009), Kashmir (1947 onwards) and Sikkim (1975)? All five incidents are text book case studies on the dos and don’ts for the exercise of […]
Read More Reclaiming a strong IndiaSubrata Roy the florid, flashy, brash promoter of the Sahara Group has been in Tihar Jail since March 4, 2014. The crime committed by him baffles most aam admis, including this one. The Supreme Court held way back in 2012 that his companies acted in contravention of the SEBI rules for public issues by unlisted […]
Read More Subrata “Sahara” Roy: Victor, villain or victim?The duality of India’s gender equity environment is pretty extreme. At the very top there is nothing new about upper crust women exercising political power; Ahilyabai Holkar in the 18th century; Begum Hazrat Mahal in the 19th ; Indira Gandhi in the 20th and Sonia Gandhi today. Post-independence, the glass ceiling at the workplace has […]
Read More Gender benders and the Indian StateDivisive economics is worse than divisive politics. Proponents of Urbanization are the loudest proponents of economic divisiveness. The vision they subscribe to is of shinning cities connected by corridors of gold, glittering like diamonds in a waste land of the rest of Bharat. Their justification is that the rest of the World has adopted this […]
Read More Myopic UrbanizationIndians are affably argumentative (Amartya Sen, 2005). Less likably, the Indian State is intensely hypocritical. It remains very medieval despite its veneer of modernism. Examples of medievalism abound. We value Indian lives very low. No minister has ever resigned because citizens, in their charge, starved to death or died due to lack of emergency […]
Read More Hypocritical IndiaThe Chinese are masters at human psychology. They stuff citizens’ faces so full of money that they can’t dissent and have left the government to its own devices over the last thirty years of high growth. When the average citizen sees her lot improving every year she is more forgiving about the big boys raking […]
Read More Corruption and growth; are they bipolar options?Why has anarchism become a fashion statement? Is it an early warning sign of the fracturing of the edifice of liberal democracy, built up over the last century? Parliaments are held in contempt now with their membership dominated by lumpen elements that are there to expropriate public resources for private gain. Citizens trust nothing except […]
Read More The yin-yang of Indian democracyThe best thing about democracy is that it provides options to the zero-sum game where the winner takes all. Even the losers, in a democracy, retain their right to participate in decision making and benefit from state actions. We have seen too little democracy in India; the largest and the developing World’s best functioning democracy, and […]
Read More Avoid zero-sum political gamesUnlike monkeys, it is not in the nature of humans to huddle though we take to cuddling quite easily. The instinct to explore new frontiers and the excessive demands which we impose on natural resources; both push us to put space between each other. The ancestors of today’s Indians trekked all the way from Africa […]
Read More Mega-cities are inhumanAt last the horrible secret is out. Courtesy an Indian Express scoop, we know that Modi has a wife, whom he hasn’t seen or talked with in the last 42 years. Apparently, they never got divorced. Jashodaben is reported to have said they only saw each other occasionally for the first three years, of which […]
Read More Modi’s wife
Opinion India 