He advocates a false morality to disguise his government’s failures
Dr Manmohan Singh the prime minister has routinely relied on platitudes (instead of on incentives) to motivate the UPA government’s policies. But he is getting even the platitudes wrong. In a country where the average annual per capita income hovers around an unacceptably low US$1000, he […]
Who gets hurt when grain exports are banned?
Swaminathan Iyer took the words out of this bloggers mouth. The UPA government, he writes “has suddenly shifted from protecting Indian farmers against cheap imports to protecting the consumer by cheapening imports”. He is referring to the ban on rice exports (which follow the export of wheat late […]
The total strength of the defence employees has risen from nearly 362,000 in 1960 to 1.3 million today. The defence pensions bill, which is over 50 percent of the central government’s pensions bill, has also risen exponentially since the 1960s. It has grown nearly tenfold from Rs. 1670 Crore in 1990-91 to Rs. 15,244 Crore […]
Should foreign law firms be allowed into India?
No, says Cyril Shroff, Managing Partner of Amarchand Mangaldas, one of India’s largest law firms.
Amarchand and other large Indian law firms have benefited immensely from liberalization in India. However, when it comes to opening up the legal sector, here’s Mr Shroff touting shibboleths like a […]
The relevant question is not Who are we going to trust but What are we going to trust?
Arnold Kling wrote a freewheeling essay last year Should You Trust the Government? in which he points out
In the case of government, there is good trust and there is bad trust. Good trust is trust in […]
The crude oil prices have finally touched $100 per barrel - a psychological barrier and a statistical inanity. The composition of Indian crude basket represents average of Oman & Dubai for sour grades and Brent (dated) for sweet grade in the ratio of 59.8:40.2 since April 2006. The Indian crude basket has touched a high […]
The Indian Finance Ministry has launched an internship programme.
More details available here - link
Sounds fascinating. If you’re interested, apply soon, since the deadline is nigh — 15 Jan.
A courtesy salaam to Ajay Shah.
Q) Is this the first such internship programme in the Finance Ministry?
As another year draws to an end, extracts from two speeches delivered this year — one by an ex-finance minister (who happens to be the current Prime Minister) and another by the current Finance Minister. Both the speeches were delivered to a foreign audience and the extracts reproduced here cover only the hard facts, […]
Russell Roberts says
We should be realistic about politicians. George Stigler used to contrast his theory of politics with Ralph Nader’s. In Nader’s view, all of the ugly aspects of government were caused by the wrong people getting elected. If we could just elect better people, then we’d get better policies. Stigler argued that it didn’t […]
Removing corruption in India entails a look at ultimate reasons, not proximate causes
Here’s a supposedly novel approach to corruption, the legalization of bribery, courtesy Ajay Shankar Pandey, the Municipal Commissioner of Ghaziabad [Chicago Tribune].
Today, contractors being paid after finishing long-delayed construction projects write the municipality a check for the 15 percent bribe that once […]
One of the criticisms leveled against India’s SEZ policy is that the zones are too small to make a real difference. But there’s a very big zone that could be an SEZ, especially if the state’s politicians—who are all for ‘autonomy’—decided economic freedom is something that is well in their capacity to achieve. And set […]
Ajay Shah has a post on the results of the Pew Institute’s latest survey:
They have three key questions that measure economic liberalism, covering attitudes towards international trade, attitudes towards foreign companies and attitudes towards free markets. The results contain many surprises. As an example, in urban India, they find 89% are supportive of international trade, […]
Let’s have unilateral trade liberalisation
Abi is right. Dweep didn’t go far enough. What India needs to do is to say “to hell with the WTO” and unilaterally, completely, dismantle trade barriers. For that matter, so does everyone else.
Here’s Sauvik Chakraverti on the topic on TCS Daily:
Unilateral free trade is a very good idea for a […]
In today’s DNA Mukul Asher & Amarendu Nandy argue that the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is ill-equipped to fulfil its mandate of providing retirement income security.
The EPFO is an unusual national provident fund in combining the features of a defined benefit scheme (Employees Pension Scheme or EPS, introduced in 1995) with those of a […]
Why strive for excellence when mediocrity will suffice?
You can’t blame Dr Manmohan Singh for telling us what the problem is. Soon after he took office, he told us that fixing the bureaucracy was crucial for India’s development. Last year, he said that the Naxalite insurgency is the biggest threat to internal security. And, now, in […]
Not quite, says our friend and erstwhile guest blogger, Blue Sky (sent via email).
“It is an article of religious faith amongst Indian and Western leftists that pro-market policies are destroying India by making it a horribly unequal place, the rich getting richer and the poor even poorer. The article linked to, from […]
The ADB has just released a report titled “Key Indicators 2007: Inequality in Asia” (covered in IHT and BBC). The report concludes that the gini index, a measure of relative inequality had grown in all 15 countries studied, since the 1990s. More alarmingly, absolute inequality had grown even more. The bank identified the trend as […]
Pragati - The Indian National Interest Review is a monthly magazine on strategic affairs and public policy; and is devoted to promoting economic freedom, an open society and realism in international relations. It regularly features articles and essays from many IEB bloggers.
You can download and subscribe to the free digital community edition of the […]
So the government has done it again. After managing to procure only about 11 million tons out of the targeted 15 million tons from our farmers, the government has gone ahead and imported about half a million tons from the international market at a much higher price. A process which, in its entirety, ends up […]
But India needs to renew its love for rights and freedoms
Jerry Rao’s op-ed in today’s Mint is a must read.
That is why we are forced to ask ourselves: should we not have a political party that is a khullam-khulla defender of markets and an opponent of an intrusive state?
S.V. Raju of the Indian Liberal Group […]