The only blood that sub-inspector Kabir Singh Limbo has seen spilled in the Nellie area has been in very bad road accidents on National Highway 37 as traffic whizzes past. Limbo has been in charge of the tin-roofed Nellie police outpost for a year-and-a-half. During monsoons, Limbo says, parts of the highway linking Assam’s Goalpara…
The RBI governor refuses to be drawn into the game of popularity stakes Well, I think we’ve still to get to a place where we feel satisfied. We have this saying, ‘in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. We’re a little bit that way. We feel things are turning to the…
Brushing up on some history, I read about how powerful dynasties in the 8th and 9th centuries fought themselves into exhaustion over the kingdom of Kannauj in north India, oblivious to the first Arab invaders who conquered Sindh in 712CE. Today, the prize of Uttar Pradesh is being fought over by three modern armies: Prime…
President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union speech at 9 pm in Washington and New York on Tuesday. That is the same prime time every evening when we Indians endure multiple SOTUs emanating in hot gusts from our television screens. Americans are luckier. They get to hear a SOTU oration just once…
Aa no bhadraha Krikava yantu vishwataha (Let noble thoughts come to us from all sides). It seems fitting to look ahead at 2017 with this 3,500-year-old invocation from the Rig Veda as we try to see beyond the seismic waves of change that came at us over the past twelve months. Terrorism. Syria. Aleppo. Brexit.…
Most of us ordinary mortals who work for scant rewards and only wish to enjoy, undisturbed, the fruits of our labour, are caught up in a war that we do not even realise had been declared on our behalf. This war is ideological and political, although it wears the sheep’s clothing of fighting for India’s…
Ernest Hemingway wrote more than once for the Toronto Daily Star on the absurdity and tragedy of German hype-rinflation after the Treaty of Versailles sealed Germany’s defeat in World War I. In a September 1922 report, he described how he and his wife exchanged 90 US cents for 670 marks on a visit to the…
It was ironical but fitting, with the rising belligerence around us, that the best thing Prime Minister Narendra Modi could do for India was the electric-shock treatment he administered on the evening of November 8. You could not have asked for a better drill in disaster preparedness. People rushed out late that night to fill…
In the preface to his 1995 book ‘How Good People Make Tough Choices’, ethicist Rushworth M. Kidder wrote that when he interviewed twenty-two leading thinkers around the world about the challenges, they saw looming in the 21st century, six themes stood out. Five of them were not surprising: the nuclear threat, environmental degradation, the North-South…
Early this week I attended a talk on Nation Branding by David Reibstein, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School. Nation branding is the perception people have of a country, whether they visit it, buy from it, or invest in it. For their 2016 Best Countries report, Reibstein and his associates surveyed 16,200 business…
On September 18, a young racehorse won a scorching victory at the Sha Tin racecourse in Hong Kong. After loitering the entire race, the horse rocketed through the final 400 meters in 21.44 seconds, the fastest time in 7,000 races. He made his rags-to-riches owner, Kerm Din, famous. The name of the three-year-old gelding…
As usual, after a major terrorist attack, we have had a few days of jingoism. One journalist tweeted that “this India’ has moved on from strategic restraint. Television anchors burst a few blood vessels, urging retaliatory attacks after Uri ”and’ surgical strikes’ across the Line of Control. A senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionary recasts…
I woke up before dawn today to an email from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office. It listed his major activities over the previous week. He had been typically busy: just before he left for Hangzhou, where he chaired a special BRICS meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Modi granted a soft-focus television interview…
Spain has embraced and subsumed its Islamic past, and this holds lessons for India, where we are debasing our historical sites- a few month ago the Taj Mahal was seen turning green literally… History is fascinating. It always circles around. A lot of history is about culture and knowledge. It is also about the gaining…
Maybe I’m starting to see ghosts in dark corners. Why else do we have Mahant Avaidyanath, the late head of the Gorakhnath Temple in Gorakhpur, being celebrated every time an election in the Hindi heartland is round the corner? It does not take an anniversary for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to celebrate the…
There is nobody left in the Valley with the moral authority, the stature and the courage to stand and speak to the angry mobs. The last man who could have, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, died nearly 34 years ago. All of us view the past through a very limiting lens. We move the glass over people…
And time yet for a hundred indecisions. And for a hundred visions and revisions—TS Eliot And time yet to revel in a plentiful monsoon, never mind that food prices continue to rise, and tomatoes now cost more than Rs 100 a kilo. There have been several good government decisions in the past few weeks. Reforms…
A senior official who is a member of the inner Gandhi circle told me Modi’s chaiwalla origin appeals to Americans, who love nothing better than a Horatio Alger-ish story of a rise from humble origins, through hard work and determination, to a lofty height Around the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi was delivering one of…
Modi can smoothly segue from pugnacious to presidential, and after two years of his ubiquitousness he can even appear statesmanlike in comparison with U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte, the president-elect of the Philippines. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on June 8, he will…
Why the regional thoroughbreds are the real winners in the assembly election sweepstakes The scene for India’s regional politics was scripted by Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai in 1967. The screenwriter and playwright led his Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to victory in Tamil Nadu (then Madras state), riding to power on resurgent Tamil nationalism and an anti-Hindi agitation. …
While we listlessly wait in century-high temperatures for the slightly delayed monsoon, listening to Minister X or Bureaucrat Y talking up the numbers, the question again is: Who are you trying to impress? Life’s but a walking shadow,a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is…
Twice in the past two and a half years, the Supreme Court has ruled with a 19th-century mindset on vital 21st-century issues affecting personal freedom using criminal and penal codification that was enacted by India’s British rulers. The Indian Penal Code of 1860 was first drafted by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1837, and its enactment…
It says something for the Congress that Sonia Gandhi has been its president for nearly 18 years, a longer, unbroken stretch than anybody in the family she married into. Night after night on our TV screens, the usual suspects, aging Congress leaders, pick apart the chicken entrails of this middleman’s diary entry or that arms…
Why is Maharashtra in such a mess? It has been written many a times about the abysmal state of agriculture in India. There is no doubt at all that vote-bank manipulation, corruption and the callous indifference of generations of politicians have severely crippled the farm sector. Maharashtra is the prize exhibit A train carrying 2.5…
Our farmers don’t have time to debate patriotism. Rural distress triggers migration, farmers’ suicides. Angry farmers are bound to hit Modi where it hurts him most – at the ballot box. If agriculture does not look up soon, the BJP will have a tough time winning the make-or-break state of UP. The squat and circular…
The only thing going for Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is his longevity in electoral politics Voter turnout in the first phase of Assam’s election on Monday was very high. By the time polls closed it had hit 78%. Assam’s voters usually turn out in large numbers, but this time the numbers bode ill for the…
Of the 5 million illegal immigrants in Assam, only 2,442 had been expelled between 1985 and 2012 The issue of citizenship in India has been rendered very complex by a thicket of laws, rules and executive fiats. Article 6 of the Constitution says anybody from East or West Pakistan who enters India after July 19,…
The only blood that Sub-Inspector Kabir Singh Limboo has seen spilled in the Nellie area has been in very bad road accidents on National Highway 37 as traffic whizzes past. Limboo has been in charge of the tin-roofed Nellie Police Outpost for a year and a half. During the monsoons, Limboo says, parts of the…
Three years of Abenomics and nationalism have not put any vim or vigour into the Japanese economy. Nor are Nationalism and loyalty preventing the Chinese economy’s slide. XI, like Modi, also want too root out corruption. “In trust we God” was emblazoned on the back of a truck roaring past us on an Indian highway.…
The last time I checked, most of JNU’s 8000-plus students were boning up for exams that will land them top bureaucratic and police jobs. Armed with a good education, they will soon turn law-abiding taxpayers themselves, and start to pay for those monumental flags. Every time Indians feel the hot and heavy breath of their…
In March 2014, two months before PM Modi was swept to power, the previous Congress govt pressed both the caste and patriotism buttons. It charged 10 Kashmiri students with sedition for shouting pro-Pak slogans in a Meerut varsity. The same month, it said Jats would be included in OBC quotas Most of us ordinary mortals…
The sheer size of our population will continue to power domestic demand for some time, but India cannot hope to be a heavyweight global player without taking ever-bigger bites of the world trade pie. Sadly, alongside falling two-way trade, India has turned increasingly protectionist The world around us grows more uneasy by the day about…
Education and urbanisation sharply narrow the economic gap between the lower and upper castes. In bigger cities and towns, if you have a good job, your caste is not a badge of shame or pride. You might even be considered an equal Every few weeks, India heaves with episodic rage. Communal unrest, ghar wapsi, Hindutva,…
Separately, an Asset Quality Review ordered by Rajan to attack crisis levels of bad loans made by state-owned banks and an accompanying crackdown on ‘willful defaulters’ among oligarchs in the infrastructure sector who have borrowed recklessly for stalled projects may have earned Rajan too many powerful and politically connected enemies. Businessmen opposed to the…
Indian markets, already skittish over Britain’s Brexit referendum, now must deal with the surprise announcement on June 18 by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan that he is stepping down when his three-year term ends on September 4. Tough, uncompromising and outspoken, Rajan, 53, appeared to be doing budget signs everything that…
In its Oct. 4 report, the RBI appeared to highlight the upside risk of inflation. It said that its September survey of household expectations saw inflation at 9.5% three months ahead and 11.4% a year ahead, driven mainly by higher food and healthcare costs. RBI staff forecast CPI averaging 5.3% in the fourth (Jan-March) quarter…
Urjit Patel’s first press conference as governor of the Reserve Bank of India on Oct. 4 was notable for several reasons. The new keeper of India’s monetary flame, just shy of his 53rd birthday, was ill at ease. Very clearly the antithesis of his loquacious predecessor Raghuram Rajan, Patel’s “media interaction” lasted all of 20…
Will demonetization vacuum up all the black money? Economists believe most illicit, untaxed funds would be diverted into buying gold or real estate; indeed, gold imports spiked in the days immediately following the announcement. But will India ever be cashless? A Nomura Securities report said that India’s cash-to-gross domestic product ratio was high at…
Every Indian banknote carries two reassuring messages: “Guaranteed by the central government,” and above the signature of the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, the words: “I promise to pay the bearer the sum of … rupees.” At midnight on Nov. 8, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi used an executive fiat to extinguish both…
About 1,200 companies have so far declared full-year results for 2015-16, averaging top-line growth of 3.7% in the quarter through March after an 8% decline over the three preceding quarters. But poor corporate health is reflected in the staggering write-offs of bad loans by state-owned banks. Punjab National Bank, the country’s third largest, reported a…
The past few weeks in India have been like drinking from a fire hose. Full-page newspaper advertisements, huge rallies and hosannas from giddy supporters have poured forth as the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party celebrates two years in power. There has also been a deluge of interviews You might also like with senior government ministers, a…
Modi’s war on black money has hit India’s economy. Is the price worth paying? Modi’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Dec. 8 announced a raft of discounts and tax rebates for citizens who used credit or debit cards and mobile wallets for transactions including buying petrol and train tickets, paying tolls or insurance premiums. Government…
Modi’s war on black money has hit India’s economy. Is the price worth paying? One month after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetization of 500 and 1,000-rupee banknotes in his battle against black money, policymakers in New Delhi are finally starting to acknowledge that the shock move has caused immense upheavals, loss…
Not surprisingly for a country obsessed with politics and gossip, the appointment of India’s new central bank chief has already spawned reams of newsprint and hours of television talk-time on what makes Urjit Ravindra Patel tick. Two words sum up Patel: low key. Unlike other deputy governors of the Reserve Bank of India he has…
Indeed, a committee headed by Patel himself in January 2014 made three far-reaching recommendations that seem certain to haunt him. First, it suggested a shift to the consumer price index as the base metric, instead of the outdated and misleading wholesale price index. Second, it called for inflation targeting, and Rajan and Modi agreed to…
CHAITANYA KALBAG, contributing writer NEW DELHI – Although his three-year term as governor of the Reserve Bank of India was one of the shortest in the last 25 years, Raghuram Rajan will leave a pair of very large shoes to fill after his departure on Sept. 4. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is taking…
CHAITANYA KALBAG, contributing writer “That is a hard standard for anybody’s commentary to meet, especially if you have a press which is continuously looking for what they think are slights to the government. It is easy to build on that,” he noted as he sought to correct claims that his governorship was one “which has…
As he leaves India’s central bank, Rajan takes aim at his critics and points out the challenges awaiting his successor NEW DELHI Although his three-year term as governor of the Reserve Bank of India was one of the shortest in the last 25 years, Raghuram Rajan will leave a pair of very large shoes to…
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), it is a make-or-break election in Assam. Of the four states and one union territory going to the polls in April and May, Assam is the only one where the BJP–having suffered defeats in Delhi and Bihar–stands a decent chance of snatching power. Except in…
The issue of citizenship in India has been rendered very complex by a thicket of laws, rules, and executive fiats. Article 6 of the Constitution says anybody from East or West Pakistan who enters India after July 19, 1948, must apply for citizenship. It is also governed by the Foreigners Act of 1946, the Passport…