CALCUTTA -THE CITY THAT REFUSES TO DIE
Nowhere else in India do people engulf you as they do in Calcutta. From the moment you step off your train or plane, and begin…
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India says China has surveillance base in Myanmar
3 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 3 (Reuters) – India’s defence minister said on Sunday China had built…
CHINA DISCUSSING SIX LOANS WITH ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
18 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 18, Reuter – China is negotiating with the Manila-based Asian Development Bank for…
SUITABLE CHINESE PROJECTS HARD TO FIND — ADB HEAD
27 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 27, Reuter – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has found it difficult to…
TAIWAN SAYS ROW OVER NAME CHANGE CONTINUES WITH ADB
27 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 27, Reuter – Taipei has ended a two-year boycott of the Asian Development…
Dalai Lama accuses China of “cultural genocide”
9 March 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 9 (Reuter) – Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Sunday accused…
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…
CALCUTTA’S INDIANS TAKE ELECTIONS IN STRIDE
21 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited Calcutta, Nov 21, Reuters – The six Bengalis splashing around a fire hydrant inches from…
Wrapup 1- China undecided on another bank bailout
12 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited BEIJING, Sept 12 (Reuters) – China has not ruled out another big bailout of…
INTERVIEW-China bank watchdog upbeat on foreign players.
12 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited BEIJING, Sept 12 (Reuters) – China’s new banking regulator said on Friday foreign banks…
Taiwan seeks banking concessions from China
15 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited TAIPEI, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Taiwan will permit its banks to do business in China…
Taiwan blames China over name change controversy
15 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited TAIPEI, Sept 15 (Reuters) – China is to blame for growing frustrations in Taiwan that…
INTERVIEW-Taiwan says it still has upper hand over China.
15 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited TAIPEI, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Taiwan still holds the upper hand against China in trade…
INTERVIEW-Washington’s Taiwan envoy bemoans rigid China.
16 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited TAIPEI, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Douglas Paal, Washington’s unofficial ambassador to Taipei, must choose…
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…
CALCUTTA IS FOEVER
Thirty years ago, a dishevelled man leaned across and shouted at me in the smoke-filled, raucous Olympia bar on Calcutta’s Park Street: “Calcutta is forever!”…
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…
Hello, Tomorrow
I had my epiphany on a Seoul subway in 2004. All around me, young men and women rode to work silently, mesmerised by television programmes…
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…
FIREFILES CAUGHT IN A LOGJAM
Without second-generation reforms and a drastic overhaul of its institutions, India is condemned to mediocre income and growth. As befits an ancient land, India is…
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…
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…
HINDI-CHINI BUY BUY
Sushma swaraj said it simply in parliament in early August when she ruled out war with China over the Doklam plateau: “China has contributed to…
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…
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…
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…
VULTURE CULTURE
PSYCHOPATHY. VOYEURISM. SADISM. Schadenfreude. Vicarious pleasure. Blood lust. You will find several terms to describe the human tendency to find a strange satisfaction, indeed fulfilment,…
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…