The Human Tragedy
It is a war without end, a no-win situation in which nobody can provide answers to some questions: How long will this go on? Which…
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Frozen in the Headlights
Poor Manmohan Singh is caught between the Pros and the Cons. The Pros in the Opposition are telling the prime minister, who has never seemed…
PHILIPPINE GNP SEEN GROWING 6.1 PCT IN 1988
4 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 4, Reuter – The Philippines’ gross national product (GNP) is expected to expand…
INTERVIEW-Kashmir might spark N-war – separatist
7 August 1998 Reuters News English (C) 1998 Reuters Limited SRINAGAR, India, Aug 7 (Reuters) – India and Pakistan could wage nuclear war over the…
Indian soldier caught in grinding Kashmir strife
9 August 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited BARAMULLA, India, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Mahendra Kumar is a typical “sepoy”, the lowest rank…
ASIAN RICE SUPPLY PLAGUED BY SHORTAGES, SOARING PRICES
24 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited LOS BANOS, Philippines, May 24, Reuter – Asia’s rice producers, reeling from the effects of…
PHILIPPINES TO ASK BANKS, IMF FOR NEW LOANS
28 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 28, Reuter – The Philippines plans to approach its creditor banks for a…
INDIA LOOKING TO SUBSTANTIAL AID FROM IMF, DONORS, OFFICIAL SAYS
27 August 1991 Reuters News English (c) 1991 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuters – India hopes to receive substantial financial aid from a consortium of donors…
INDIA WILL ASK IMF FOR MORE FUNDS – MINISTER
13 April 1992 Reuters News English (c) 1992 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuters – India intends to ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for more contingency…
Indian reforms are irreversible, lawmaker says
22 April 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, April 22, Reuters – One of the architects of India’s radical economic reforms said…
The Dauphin and the Figurehead
Timing is everything, and with a number of state elections soon, leading to the general election next year, cynicism and opportunism are manifest. The Congress-led…
Garam hawa
India must construct an enlightened climate change policy ‘FOOD PRICES set to rise as floods ruin crops’. ‘Prime Minister promises aid to flood victims’. Does…
Wanted- A Big Bang Budget
These are extraordinary times and we witness extraordinary phenomena. Three weeks before the Union Budget, when finance ministers customarily crawl under their carapaces, the honourable…
Manila Unloads Sugar Stocks to curb price rise
17 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 17 – The Philippines” Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) has ordered all its reserve…
Ready For Battle
I remember sticking an aluminium one-yen coin and a copper one-US-cent coin to my computer screen in Tokyo around the mid-1990s and watching in fascination…
IT’S THE ELECTION, STUPID
The economy is whirling around in a populist spiral Pranab Mukherjee is starting to look worryingly like a feckless heir squandering his generous inheritance while…
Modi Unlimited
Coasting down the six-lane highway from Ahmedabad to Gandhinagar, wheels barely touching the asphalt, it is tempting to forget that you are in the India…
The Best Companies To Work For
Know one’s onions” means to know one’s subject well. But do we really know why our economy fares as it does, how supply and demand…
Going Nowhere
I remember my first car with great fondness. It was a Fiat 1100D, and I crashed it barely a month after my wife and I…
Pester Power
Remember when mall meant a tree-shaded promenade in Shimla or one of those picturesque cantonment towns, and plastic was when your grandmother graduated from tin…
Tyre Prices – Vastly Over-Inflated
Tyres are one essential commodity over which the Government seems to exert no control whatsoever. In the last six months prices have risen twice. And…
From Flood To Trickle
Large advertisements in Delhi newspapers-last fortnight announced that Mother Dairy was being forced to dilute the fat content of milk supplied to the capital’s citizens…
The Method Man
Gujarat’s Chief Minister tells Chaitanya Kalbag in a wide-ranging interview that policy and process make a heady development cocktail Narendra Modi is not a tall…
Lemmings or Llamas?
The US is on life support, and Asian creditors led by China, which holds $1.16 trillion of US treasuries, control the intravenous drip. Asian central…
Panic Button
Reading An Account of the Great Fear, or Grande Peur, that swept across France in July and August of 1789, I was struck by the…
THE DAISY’S PETALS
It’s a NAIL-BITER. I predicted in another column that the Lok pal Search Committee of eight eminent persons might cap a five-year slow waltz just…
GREAT STRESS TEST
Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and the Grand Stupid Thought, the headline is my humble contribution to your lexicon.…
HOLLOWING OUT
Privatisation will work only when the government sells more than 50 per cent of a state-owned company’s capital to the public and relinquishes management control.…
SELL SELL SELL
Two numbers speak eloquently about our schizophrenia over privatisation: the Rs 2.11 trillion ($32.5 billion) package announced on October 24 to recapitalise public-sector banks (PSBs);…
BHAG PIYUSH BHAG
Piyush Goyal is a chartered accountant, lawyer, former investment banker, former Bharatiya Janata Party treasurer, and a go-getter. Goyal, who likes taking leadership courses (currently…
HOW TO MAKE MORE WITH LESS
How much a hurry is prime minister Narendera Modi in? It depends on your horizon. By one measure, he has 22 months, but then he…
TOO BIG TO FAIL
Independence Day is a good excuse for some economic chest-thumping. We should be proud that lndia is a free-enterprise democracy. Imagine the world’s burden if…
Glass Half-Full?
We can hope that in the run-up to the next general election we will not suffer the type of jolts to our nervous systems that…
FUTURE TENSE
So let’s see: 2018 is supposed to be a good year for India. We have low inflation, the monsoon may be normal, manufacturing is finally…
TELLING NUMBERS
Look Carefully at all the Headlines, screaming or otherwise, that are popping up these days about corruption. How many of them feature women? Study after…
VIRAL FEVER
Start exercise your smartphone thumb, because the next big election will be fought on our mobiles. The latest Internet and Mobile Association of India survey…
RED-LETTER DAYS
This is a year of anniversaries , some unpleasant, some prescient, some momentous. CE 2019 is important not only because of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s…
NaMo the FMCG
If you want to decompress from the 2019 election campaign, and haven’t already donned the colours to be a cheering face in a shouting crowd…
Off the Blocks
For the second time in five years, I was struck by how apposite Rud-yard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ is in relation to Narendra Modi. At one…