Aaditya Mattoo, Deepak Mishra and Ashish Narain, in the Times of India, on the problem and solution for Indian agriculture: So, here’s the paradox: the hard-working Indian farmer — one of the world’s low-cost producers — is unable to compete globally. What is hobbling the Indian giant? A recent World Bank study finds that the [...]
Anyone who writes about there being “two Indias” is necessarily wrong. Anyone who describes India’s jettisoning of the licence raj in 1991 using words like “neo-liberal” is necessarily confused. And anyone who writes about Indian agriculture quoting P Sainath and no one else is necessarily unbalanced. Rajinder Sahota, writing in the Financial Times (they actually [...]
This is an op-ed piece of mine that appeared in the March 8th issue of Mint. Unknown Education Revolution There is a silent and telling revolt against the poor performance of government schools Naveen Mandava Walking around the hot summer streets of Sangam Vihar—Delhi’s largest slum colony sprawled over 150 acres and home to 4 [...]
Some interesting commentary in the papers this week: Anantha Nageswaran’s opening salvo, in the newly launched Mint: Central bankers in most of the developed world have taken that to heart in dealing with financial markets. Financial markets, in theory, have more participants than those engaged in the economic marketplace. Hence, the outcomes of their buying [...]
Setting up a commodity futures market is the first attempt to reform agriculture Why have reforms not improved the lot of the Indian farmer as much as it has improved, say, the lot of an educated city dweller? One blogger (can’t remember exactly who) made the point very succinctly. Well, because there has been no [...]
TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan puts Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the dock: It is also useful to dwell on the imperatives that have been at work. Basically, the public and private thing, for instance in infrastructure, is the result of bad governance. The governments transfer the little money they collect from the cities to the countryside because [...]
How much of Dr Manmohan Singh’s talk on reforming agriculture will get translated into action? Inaugurating the Second Agriculture Summit 2006 organised jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture and FICCI, the Prime Minister declared that the endeavour of his government would be to bridge each of the four deficit viz. the public investment and credit [...]
Last week Cherian Thomas and Anand Krishnamoorthy had an article on Bloomberg where they suggested that lack of clear investment rules may impede the inflow of investment funds which could make possible the truly daunting programme of infrastructural works which are needed in India between now and 2010. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may struggle [...]
Resolving the ‘agrarian crisis’ requires understanding the laws of economics P Sainath’s years of experience covering India’s countryside lends a credibility to his voice. How unfortunate it is then that he should expend it on framing the issue in partisan, rich vs poor, urban vs rural terms. Here’s an excerpt from a recent interview he [...]
Does anyone have first-hand experience of the Right To Information (RTI) Act, ie in using the Act for personal/ professional purposes? I’m trying to figure out how widespread and user-friendly the Act is in practice. My interest has been piqued by Arvind Kejriwal’s Magsaysay Award, and the press that Parivartan has been getting. Sounds very [...]
Bhavya Khanna relates a fascinating explanation: Nehru in his often stated brilliance imposed severe restrictions on the trade and price of Gold in India. The sheik of Dubai had free trade in Gold, and was well, a smuggler’s paradise. Combine the two and you have possibly the largest movement of illegal gold trade in the [...]
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 [...]
For long Delhi had an “Essentiality Certificate” (EC) requirement for opening a school. Moreover, the number of ECs were limited depending upon school-eligible population in each district of Delhi. The ostensible motive was to regulate competition and allow only schools which were deemed “essential”. So that existing schools did not suffer the consequences of the [...]
The Times of India reports: In a remote village in Tamil Nadu, little Nirmala (12), rolls her nimble fingers over a sheaf of tobacco leaves, pins them adroitly into a tumti yale and seals the edges. She has to do this about 2,000 times a day, like she has been doing for over two years [...]
Attacking targets of convenience won’t bring down the retail price of petrol
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