The employees of the Airport Authority of India, who’ve been in the news recently courtesy the anti-privatization protest strike have started their own blog. This (the blog, not the strike) is good news. Thanks to technology, more and more people have avenues to express their point of view. As far as the strike goes, I [...]
If one were to look at the factors of production (land, labour, capital and enterprise) and look at the corresponding cases pending in Indian courts, one can have a very good understanding of the performance of the institutions arranged around these factors. It is no wonder that any task of economic reforms will have to [...]
The US-based Conference Board has a new report out on global productivity (hat tip to New Economist). The core message of the report is the following: “Most countries in the developed world (North America, Europe and developed Asia) experienced a slowdown in productivity growth rates in 2005…Countries at the higher end of the global productivity [...]
Anyone who has tried to provide a plan to a minister for implementing reform (market-based ones) in the public sector will soon run into the thorny issue of labour unions. It is a tough nut to crack! Ironically, West Bengal seems to have have found a way, and that too by making somebody else pay [...]
The answer: an inadequate and outdated educational system. Ajay Shah writes One of the key reasons why India is doing well today is the revolution in services exports, where white collar staff in India are plugged into globalisation, thanks to improvements in telecom. Today, there are probably a million people working in export-oriented IT and [...]
Over the last few years, there’ve been an increasing slew of proclamations about America’s “decline” as an economic power — for instance, check this Fortune cover story by Geoff Colvin. A key figure cited by the “declinistas” as evidence of America’s decline is the huge imbalance of engineering graduates between the US and those two [...]
Speaking about FDI in retail, the Indian Express writes: Plenty has been said—and an awful lot written—about mom and pop shops shutting down and taking with them the friendly, smiling, simple shop assistants who apparently define a part of our culture. That’s what, with different details, America’s “liberal” and anti-free trade conservatives say about outsourcing [...]
The Hindustan Times reports: India contributes 28 per cent to the total talent pool of knowledge workers in the world. This has helped it corner 65 per cent of the information technology business and 46 per cent of the ITES market. But the greatest challenge staring the software services exports in the face is skill [...]
In the previous post, Eswaran points me to this article which claims that labour laws are the least of India’s worries. The reasoning given there is so bad that I was left wondering how anyone in his right senses could advance it. Just as I was preparing to write a response, I remembered that I [...]
Sanjeev Naik points me to a piece by Amelia Gentleman in the International Herald Tribune that speaks about the plans of the West Bengal government to ban hand-pulled rickshaws. Gentleman writes: The mayor describes the job as “despicable”; the chief minister of the state of West Bengal, a Marxist, says it is “barbaric.” City officials [...]
First it was the Wall Street Journal. Then it was Yale Global , followed by the Economist. And now, it’s Fortune’s turn to tell us that India isn’t an economic juggernaut — and isn’t likely to become one, in the near future. Clay Chandler laments India’s almost willful disregard for the fundamentals of developmental economics. [...]
Today’s lead editorial in the Times of India is spot on regarding the “labour movement” in India. India’s unionised labour is a tiny, entrenched labour aristocracy which when not forcing lock-outs and shutdowns, hikes pay and perks for their own members and makes it extremely tough for poorer, lower-wage workers to enter the job market. [...]
The Times of India reports that “[the] Haryana government has sent notices to Gurgaon-based call centres asking them not to allow women employees on night shifts.” Do I even need to comment on this depressing, regressive move? One of the biggest indicators of a society’s progress is the empowerment of women, and although women are [...]
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 [...]
The Wall Street Journal speaks out against a cap on H-1B visas, and in favour of letting market forces decide. It writes: Contrary to the assertions of many opponents of immigration, from Capitol Hill to CNN, the size of our foreign workforce is mainly determined by supply and demand, not Benedict Arnold CEOs or a [...]
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