A version of this piece was first published in the Asian Wall Street Journal (subscription link).
The road to hell is paved with good intentions—and nobody knows that better than India’s poor. There can be no better intention than removing poverty but, for more than half a century, a well-intentioned and bloated state has only perpetuated […]
And write code every day?!
The computer programmers arrived in the United States unknown to each other but united in their quest to rock. On the surface, they were not unlike many others who have left India over the past decade on the H-1B visa, a guest worker program for highly skilled professionals. They wore […]
In a superb post, Primary Red of Secular-Right India writes:
[W]elfare states create dependency, not wealth. They sustain poverty, not eliminate it. In effect, they pay people to remain poor.
[…]
When the Great Society debate was raging in the 60s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (an early neo-conservative and later Ambassador to India) pointed out the difference between a […]
Ramesh Venkataraman feels that “[t]he problem with reforms is not with the Left,” but with the Right. He writes in the Indian Express:
Liberal economics must shed the taint of being the “dogma of the rich” that the Left has attached to it and liberalisation shown to be in the best interests of the broader populace. […]
Brahma Chellaney writes in the Wall Street Journal(subscription required)
China is driving Japan and India closer together. Tokyo, as if to make up for decades of neglect, is enthusiastically recognizing India’s potential as an investment destination and strategic partner. Reversing a long-standing pattern, Tokyo now provides more development loans to India than to China.
Japan’s increased interest […]
So India’s the next superpower, eh? TN Ninan gives us a reality check:
The inescapable fact is that even today India accounts for only 2 per cent of the world’s GDP, less than 1 per cent of world trade, less than 1 per cent of global investment flows and an even smaller share of global technology […]
Suresh Venkatasubramanian of The Geomblog writes in to me and, as a tangential aside to another discussion, says:
I’d make the claim that the libertarian point of view makes far more sense in India [than in the USA], where we’ve had 60 years of a paternalistic socialistic regime and desperately need a free-market swing, and makes […]
“Fears that liberalisation will destroy our companies were proved wrong,” points out the Indian Express. “Now we fear FDI in retail.” We need not, of course. No more than we need fear the sun.
Speaking out in favour of retail FDI, Nandan Nilekani writes:
Over a decade ago, we did some far-reaching things that put the sparkle back in the eyes of our educated urban youngsters. What right do we have to deny to the millions of kids growing up today, the same opportunity in our fields, factories and stores? […]
I am sure all of you are are cognizant of the disaster unfolding in New Orleans and elsewhere in Louisiana and Mississipi. If you happen to live or work in North America and havent done so already, I would urge you to take a few minutes of your online time out and donate to a […]