Letter From The Editor
Democracy sometimes teaches strange lessons, and the strangest of them all is currently being acted out in the remote Northeastern state of Assam. Since January…
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Letter From The Editor
THERE are, said the poet Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. The essence of that particular truth came home forcefully last fortnight…
Letter from the Editor
There can be little more excitement for the media than to chronicle political events from inception to climax. Opportunities tend to be rare, but as…
FEELIN’ GOOD
Optimism is good, but let’s not be foolhardy It is good that we are feeling bucked UP at the beginning OF 2018. Major economies expect growth…
Interview- India’s Sinha wants to go for growth
2 June 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 2 (Reuters) – India’s Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha put up a spirited…
Interview- India targets not just “hope and prayer”
3 June 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 3 (Reuters) – India’s fiscal targets for the current year are not…
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…
Earthy Tales
Or, why India really needs to dig itself out of a mineral hole Last week I was on a flight to Mumbai About two hours…
10 Most Powerful Women in Indian Business
They say nothing sharpens our minds as much as high danger or a threat to our survival. We are prepared to stand and fight when…
Ready For Battle
From the Editor 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…
Hooks & Crooks
From the Editor I remember a composite satellite photograph of the world taken at night time. One country stood out like a black blotch on…
Are Indian CEOs Overpaid?
The day before this issue of Business Today hits news stands, America will vote for a new president. The day after you invest less than…
Eight Innovations That Delighted Consumers and What India can Learn From Them
Letter to Editor I had never handled a tool in my life; and yet, in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last…
India’s Coolest Start-Ups
From the Editor Some things were on a fast track as the heat dragged us into the dog days of June, and some were on…
Home Truths
And now at the end he found himself in his own house, on his own half-lot of land, his own portion of the earth. That…
Reaping The Whirdwind
Hiteswar Saikia was last Fortnight trying to settle into the hottest seat in India-the chief ministers hip of Assam. The diminutive, balding ‘politician had been…
The Burning Of Assam
The fuse has been burning for almost four years and the mood in the state has passed through all the faces of anger, despair and…
The Opposition-The Games Old Men Play
There is an old Indian parable that says it all: six blind men feel various parts of an elephant’s anatomy, and each one extrapolates, from…
A State Ravaged
It was beyond the ken of a civilised society, a blood spattered vindication of a heartless government’s sudden constitutional piety. The carnage began with a…
Ends of Justice
So Ham-Handed and desperate for representatives of any stature in Assam has the Congress(I) become that it has jettisoned all concern for decorum and dignity…
Lok Dal-Taken For A Ride
No point of no return was so final as the one Charan Singh and Devi Lal reached on July 21. The crusty Jat leaders have…
Interview: Anil Agarwal
“Everybody is going to die, but I am going to die last.” He started out as a scrap trader in Patna. Today, with a personal…
WHO WILL CAST THE FIRST STONE?
The Jan Lokpal Bill may need to move from idealism to realism; the solution may also lie in granting independence and teeth to existing agencies…
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
Take a deep breath and don’t run for the door Reading An Account of the Great Fear, or Grande Peur, that swept across France in…
Great Stress Test
It’s good we now have a GST, but its design is another matter Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and…
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?
Strong, sustained growth is possible—if we don’t trip ourselves up We can hope that in the run-up to the next general election we will not…
Identify Yourself
We can barely keep count of ourselves, leave alone migrants The Fates Of the four million people whose names did not appear in the ‘complete…
The Dog’s tail
Like the clever taxpayer, it will wag the system There is no loophole that has not met an Indian taxpayer. A Hindi proverb says you…
Clutching At Straws
Palliatives, pain-killers or band-aids: take your pick We are so frozen in the headlights of the on rushing slowdown that even a flicker leads us…