governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
Over the last decade we have become accustomed to public spectacles mounted by the BJP with verve and grandeur. One such is the show on Independence Day. Masterful rhetoric, a mix of humility and extreme confidence and an array of “facts” rolled out by Prime Minister Modi, mesmerize the audience into a fantasy of India […]
Read More Is Modi Mania Waning?In a desperately poor land, which just got poorer, it is ironic that we succeeded in the big challenges, like keeping democracy alive, but failed in the most basic of municipal functions – quality education to develop skill sets for productive employment; health services, sanitation, sewage management and drinking water facilities to insulate people from […]
Read More Scraping the fiscal barrel-the bottom up viewAmitabh Kant the CEO of NITI Ayog got a taste of the underside of celebrity status when his remark on there being “too much democracy in India” created a social media storm of protest. Mr. Kant clarified subsequently that the news coverage had omitted the latter part of his sentence “……. for it to be […]
Read More Democratic overloadIn a quietly subversive “revolt” 47 officers of the Indian Revenue Service, which administers taxes on income, hit the headlines this week with a policy paper “Fiscal Options and Response to Covid-18 Epidemic” FORCE outlining the tax measures government could take to deal with the economic downside of Covid-19. Too young to be seen or […]
Read More May the FORCE be with young IRS officersGovernments reveal their true character under stress. China, by design or accident, showed the world how national interest comes first, by ruthlessly stamping out the disease within Wuhan itself – at a high and possibly underreported, cost to the folks who live there. Strong willed, independent minded United Kingdom, addicted to significant anal behavior, fiddled […]
Read More Unpacking India’s response to the COVID aftermathIf development, or the promise of it, won the BJP its imposing political dominance in 2014 and again in 2019, is it now destiny which will maintain the inertia of electoral endorsements? Sustainable Development metrics “Development” is best measured by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals under which there are 169 targets to be achieved by […]
Read More Forget elusive growth, focus on developmentThe first 100 days of the Modi 2.0 government have been marked by lows and highs. Sadly, the lows are longer lasting, while the highs are transient, even in the short term. The biggest low was the Budget for FY 2019-20 in July, which was presented, in the absence of the late Arun Jaitley, with […]
Read More Modi 2.0 100 not out!It was an unequal fight to begin with. Structurally, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the nation’s central bank, is squarely under the government’s thumb. The government appoints the governor of the RBI and can curtail his tenure. Two-thirds of the RBI’s board consists of government appointees who are not RBI officials. The government can […]
Read More Urjit Patel the only winner in the Govt-RBI slugfestThe brouhaha over Mr Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Nagpur, as the chief guest at a valedictory function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), foregrounds the stunted nature of politics in India. Politics is about reaching out First, consider the absurdity of the prevailing schoolboy notion of “team” spirit extending to a ban on supping […]
Read More Pranab da mimics Atal jiMaharajakrishna Rasgotra, India’s foreign secretary from 1982 to 1985, records that in 1948, contrary to the popular perception, the wealthy “Doon School wallahs” preferred to join the domestic services, where they could keep an eye on their assets, and that the IFS boys were at a premium only amongst the urbanised, “sophisticated girls of marriageable […]
Read More An “Ambassador” amongst “box wallahs”
Opinion India 