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…

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ITC – Haksar’s last Hurrah

Sentimentality rarely intrudes in­ to shareholders’ meetings, but this one was different. Over 3,000 had gathered in the incongruous setting of a Calcutta cathedral compound…

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Mathematics Of Ragas

When Frenchman Bernard Bel and American Jim Arnold met by chance in a Delhi hotel in September 1979, it turned out to be a momentous…

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The Bhajan Bludgeon

The Sprawling city that Charles-Edouard le Corbusier had designed for bureaucrats and retired people looked like an army encampment girding up for an enemy onslaught.…

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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…

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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…

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CLOSE,, BUT NO CIGAR

Finance Ministers take on a certain air when they think things are going swimmingly and nothing can rock the economy when it is cruising along.…

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