Budgeting- ‘Guns versus Butter’
The Indian budgeted defence expenditure (DE) for the current year (2007-08) is Rs. 96,000 crore and the Indian Army’s share of this pie is approximately 47%. The DE is 2.07% of the GDP; the corresponding figures for Pakistan and China are 3.4% and 2.8 % respectively. But there is a […]
The Fundamental Questions
The Indian armed forces, in the broadest sense, comprise the three defence services – the army, navy and the air force; the federal or central police or paramilitary forces; and the state police forces. These categories are very broad and many defence organisations fall in either-or / both categories. The most glaring examples […]
So here I am, back in India after a couple of years, doing research for a project in the relatively rich rural district of West Godavari in Andhra Pradesh. Some biased observations based on the few data points here.
Train prices are increasingly affordable and hence demand outstrips supply. For the first time, I was ready […]
Wonk nirvana
The 2007 ICT Opportunity Index, the ITU explains, “has benefited from the expertise of several international and research organizations, (and) is based on a carefully selected list of indicators and methodology. It is an important tool to track the digital divide by measuring the relative difference in ICT Opportunity levels among economies and over […]
I received an email from a gentleman named Annamalai Veerappan recently which raised some interesting questions that I am not qualified to answer. I’m posting his entire email here, in the hope that IEB readers will pitch in.
I’ve been following the US housing bubble for the past 2 years and it’s been amazing. How people […]
Mohammad Younus has an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal on how microfinance can be used to rebuild the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.
But can microfinance work in all conditions? I don’t know much about the local economies of New Orleans or Mississippi, but it’s not been a roaring success in India yet. Karthik/SK/Wimpy/SKimpy […]
When populism is so stupid, what does it say about people? IANS reports:
The Kerala Assembly united on Thursday to condemn ostentatious weddings in the state and came out with suggestions to curb wedding expenses. With the increasing demand that the state government should intervene to curb extravagance in marriages, Law Minister M Vijayakumar said his […]
To read more, check India Uncut. If you want to help, or are looking for help, check Mumbai Help
Regular readers of this blog might be interested in a feature that was recently carried in Brunch, a Hindustan Times supplement, that focussed on NRIs who have returned to India to try and make a difference. IEB contributor Atanu Dey is one of them, and the section on him speaks of the Rural Infrastructure and […]
Corruption, in some cases, can have an economic benefit. Joel Waldfogel explains:
Since access to government clerks is normally allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, people pay with their time rather than their money. This is inefficient: Suppose you’re in a big hurry and would be willing to pay a lot to avoid waiting, while I […]
From the “Don’t Know What’s the Point Department,” the new release is I am India on Google Video. A collage of images–a field of wind power generators, a soaring jet in the blue skies above a lush green field, the majestic fall of water from a dam–introduce words of ersatz wisdom: “A man’s karma is […]
The Telegraph reports:
The next time you need to send an urgent letter, you may have to depend on snail mail.
The government today proposed amendments to the Indian Post Office Act, 1898, banning private courier companies from carrying letters weighing less than 300 gm.
The private courier industry is livid, but the government’s defence is that it […]
In a superb post titled “The New Yorker and the Beatles,” Don Boudreaux writes:
[C]reative human insights are the driving force of our prosperity. By allowing xenophobia and protectionist rent-seekers to restrict the number of people who contribute their ideas to the market process, we inevitably reduce — and perhaps even reverse — the rate […]
This is a thought from the top of my head based on my experience in India and discussions with a few business managers here in the US.
Firms would like to have a continuous stream of information about public policies and businesses in South Asia from a market perspective. Right now they can only have […]
There are a couple of important lessons that I would like to share with consumers of public policy analysis, lessons gleaned from my own coursework and work experience. The immediate context is the rise of policy analysis in the blogosphere. I strongly believe that ideas have a fringes-to-mainstream transition. And it is a good sign […]
IEB may not have made it, but there’s no dearth of bloggers at Davos. As Pablo Halkyard points out on the World Bank Blog (linking to multiple bloggers himself)
If you have been reading the newspapers you would swear that Davos was a blogger convention, not a power gathering ‘meant to improve the world’.
Update: […]
Among the contemporary economists I greatly admire, Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Sachs appear at the top. Much of what I know of international trade, I learnt from Krugman and Obstfeld’s book on the subject. I admire Sachs for the work he is doing in focusing attention on the problems of underdeveloped parts of the world. […]
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe, said Abe Lincoln. Astonishing how much profoundly practical wisdom is packaged into that simple declaration. Time spent in sharpening the tool is time well-spent; so is time spent in thinking through a problem and thoroughly understanding […]
Michael Higgins compares the India he saw in 2005 to the India of his previous visit, back in 1995
In 1995, there were signs that India was at the cusp of some development. My wife went on and on about all of the changes she saw. Now in 2005, I could see some changes first hand. […]
IEB wishes all its readers a happy 2006…. peace and happiness and more…
Sidebar: While we may all be Gregorians now (to paraphrase Nixon), here’s a few other calendars for those interested: the Hindu, Islamic, Jain and Zoroastrian calendars.