A rare opportunity to reform Indian agriculture on November 12, 2011Indian politicians, always a lazy and indolent lot, are back at their usual game of throwing others’ money at intractable problems to buy votes rather than work hard to create a more efficient and caring society. Twenty years of patchy economic reforms, aimed at dismantling the Nehruvian licence-permit raj, have yielded modest dividends through a […]
Regulation lags behind change in our global village on November 5, 2011The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has been an inchoate cry in the wilderness that the economic system, especially in the US but also in much of the west, has not performed as promised in creating prosperity for all. Capitalism’s raison d’être was that it worked more efficiently than communism, while producing more prosperity for […]
All that glitters is not gold on August 27, 2011Recently, the vaults of the centuries-old Padmanabhaswamy Temple were opened after some 150 years to reveal a treasure trove of gold, silver and precious stones running into $ 40 billion. India has a long history of burying its wealth in vaults as a hedge against political risk or outright expropriation. India’s small principalities, split among […]
The coming middle class revolt on August 20, 2011As the world plunges into a long term bear market that could last another two years or more, it has become obvious that there are no easy or quick fixes to the current set of problems that bedevil the world economy. The hope that the world’s central bankers could rekindle growth with their ‘Keynesian’ stimulus […]
Did Fed bet the bank on betting money? on August 12, 2011Why is the Federal Reserve System (Fed) unable to kick-start the US economy despite pumping in trillions of dollars into it? Have Keynesian techniques of stimulating slack demand failed? As the world wades into the swamp of another recession, the question takes on urgency. Banking crises are not new in history. Some suggest they follow […]
Does India live in its villages? on August 6, 2011The Indian economy appears to be running out of steam as fractious politics and unprecedented corruption combine with policy paralysis to take their toll on growth. Suddenly capital is predatory, industrialists and politicians are crony capitalists if not robber barons, the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Fossilised minds are busy churning […]
The high road to state capture by extremists on July 23, 2011Karnataka exemplifies how an illegal mining mafia can overwhelm, capture and suborn a state to its purpose given a suitable opportunity for a large enough profit. Karnataka is not a backward state. It is reasonably well developed, home to India’s Silicon Valley in Bangalore. It boasts of premier public sector names in the high technology […]
Where have Indias Adivasis disappeared? on July 16, 2011“The strategic adversary is fascism…the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us” — Michel Foucault. At independence, India started out with 24 million Adivasis (indigenous people) constituting 7.5 percent of our population. […]
Piggy banks and political pork II on July 3, 2011An honest currency, positive real interest rates and liberalisation of import of gold were at the heart of reforms unleashed by Dr Manmohan Singh in the 1990s. Under his very watch as prime minister, the first two elements of reforms have been reversed by his current finance minister and it is moot how long it […]
Piggy banks and political pork I on July 2, 2011One rough estimate shows households paid Rs 1,800 billion in hidden taxes to the Indian government in 2009-10. That is a whopping 40 percent of the Rs 4,350 billion in explicit direct taxes collected by the government in that year. This sleight of hand is accomplished through negative real rates of interest. If ‘negative real […]