Can Modi balance populism and prudence as external risks mount? India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi likes taking big steps and does not shy away from wagering his political capital. But he squandered quite a bit of it with his November demonetization measures, which banned 500- and 1,000-rupee bank notes. Modi was widely expected to unveil…
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…
The government’s ‘Saaf Niyat, Sahi Vikas’ (Clean Intent, Right Development) campaign is expectation management in an election year. Nineteen months after demonetisation, we still do not have a final count for the total volume of banned currency notes returned to the nation’s banks. Are we really a less-cash economy now? Authorities had to scramble to…
Money is making Election 2019 go around. Currency with the public totalled Rs. 20.64 trillion on March 15, five days after the elections were announced. This compared with Rs. 12.48 trillion on March 7, 2014, two days after the previous Lok Sabha election was announced. Where is the less-cash economy that demonetisation was supposed to…
Wish the government would stop trying to defend demonetisation. Every time there is bad economic news, the government jumps up to proclaim that demonetisation was the boldest and best reform since cowrie shells were first used as currency three thousand years ago (now you know the origin of “ek phooti kauri”). Trying too hard to…
Team leader Modi is fishing in a shallow talent pool How much of a hurry is prime minister Narendera Modi in? It depends on your horizon. By one measure, he has 22 months, but then he has set an October 2, 2019 deadline for Swachh Bharat, and August 15, 2022 for a New India. Mohan…
What lies ahead? A messy GST rollout could be one shock too many after demonetisation… 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. Even if all the lookouts are calling out to them to mind the shoals, they…