governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
Kejriwal combines Gandhian social skills with canny street fighting ability, backed by a solid record of social activism. In today’s Delhi, this is an unbeatable combination. If we followed a Presidential system, Kejriwal could well have been the Chief Minister of Delhi, instead of having to get into the muck of party politics. However, India […]
Read More Kejriwal’s Governance DebutDelhi voters are in search of a government. The BJP only has 32 and can at best reach 34 with the two “others” elected. To go further and get 36 it needs to break off two-thirds of the Congress or the Aam Admi Party (AAP) MLAs. Neither option seems viable. The AAP has been offered […]
Read More AAP can’t buck the muckKejriwal must have thanked his stars that his fledgling Aam Admi Party (AAP) polled only 28 of the 70 available seats in the Delhi State assembly. Just 8 more seats would have forced him to form a government and rule! The embarrassment of electoral riches Kejriwal now faces, with his massive mandate to “rule for […]
Read More Kejriwal: Reluctant Chief MinisterThe citizens of Delhi are a spoilt lot. They pay the least in taxes relative to income (the highest in India and three times the average national income) and get the maximum subsidies and facilities from the government. The expenditure for the current financial year 2013-14 is INR 24,000 per person, the bulk of which […]
Read More The New PoliticiansSex is an outcome but also often the cause of inflamed passions. Regulating sex through law has a downside because the adversarial, legal process we follow is pretty poor at establishing “guilt”. The police are so busy lining the roads for VIPs and doing crowd control, that investigating individual crime is a low priority. Shoddy […]
Read More Careful with the eyes and anklesThanks to Bill Clinton and his legal brilliance, the definition of what constitutes a sex offence has become so broad that men and women now need to comply with the strictest code of antiseptic, social behavior. Earlier we all knew when we were crossing the line since the rule was simple. In Rome do as […]
Read More Digit Sex, Lies and False GodsThe Gujarat Snoopgate can play out three ways. In two variations Amit Shah may be guilty. In the third version Modi himself may be the culprit. Amit Shah was either acting, at the behest of Modi, to help the woman’s father keep track of his daughter or was personally interested in the woman himself. The […]
Read More Modi & Kejriwal; adrift sans a “clean” anchorBlame it on Nehru. If it had not been for him, India (U-ndivided) would comprise Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and Bangladesh, though regrettably still not Sri Lanka (Galle and Kandulama are so beautiful!). Now why couldn’t the man have just made Jinnah the PM, who would have been gone soon enough, anyway. Nehru would have been […]
Read More Netaji-Mulayam’s 30/30 India (U) VisionForeigners aiming to live in Delhi must first get acquainted with its culture. It is they who need to adapt. No one, not the Mughals, the Brits, the entrepreneurial Punjabi refugees from Pakistan, the rich but rude, Haryanvi landowners, the clever South Indian Brahmins, desperate Bangladeshi refugees, the skilled Bihari, Eastern UP and Oriya migrants, […]
Read More A Foreigner in DelhiIndia is caught in the quintessential indecisiveness of the fictional, Danish, Prince Hamlet, created by Shakespeare, who agonizes over “to be or not to be”, loosely applied here as “to go or not to go”, to the forthcoming Commonwealth meet in Sri Lanka. Apparently, at issue is only how to deal with the outraged […]
Read More Sending Hamlet to Lanka
Opinion India 