The question is being debated as never before MUCH against his wishes, Dr Manoj Shah may yet become a national hero. He is the polio victim who failed to get a seat in the post-graduate pathology course in Ahmedabad’s BJ Medical College. The reason? There was only one seat in the pathology department and that,…
The truth is, India isn’t rich enough to be a welfare state William Safire must be turning in his grave. The language maven and Richard Nixon speechwriter came up with the ‘nattering nabobs of negativism” phrase that US Vice- President Spiro Agnew used in a 1970 speech. Finance minister Arun Jaitley first used ‘nawabs of…
How many different kinds of evidence do we need to convince ourselves that the economy is slowing dramatically? Consumer price index (CPI) inflation fell to 2.2% in May, but that was put down by facile analysis to plunging food prices and a good monsoon. The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) base year has been moved…
It was twenty years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play They’ve be been going in and out of style but they guaranteed to raise a smile …
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.- Julius Caesar, Act 1 By Wednesday elections had been held for 438 seats, or four-fifths of the 16th Lok Sabha, and it seemed like a good point to draw breath and take stock of the men and women who…
By Wednesday elections had been held for 438 seats, or four-fifths of the 16th Lok Sabha, and it seemed like a good point to draw breath and take stock of the men and women who will wield power over us for the next five years. Many of us believe that these elections will be decided…
Exactly two years ago we ran a cover story on India’s skills crisis. This was just after Subramanian Ramadorai was named Adviser to the Prime Minister in the National Council on Skill Development. How quickly have we moved down the skilling highway? Glacially slow, and frighteningly so. For a nation where tens of millions of…
63 million ‘missing’ women: we need a pink revolution Look Carefully at all the Headlines, screaming or otherwise, that are popping up these days about corruption. How many of them feature women? Study after study has found over the years that more members of the ‘fairer sex’ in parliament and in the top echelons of…
Time to stop being a semi-skilled nation In India if you book a plumber to come and rescue you from a flooded bathroom, chances are you will get a call at 11 a.m. the following day asking you to repeat your complaint or checking on directions to your address. If you sputter in rage, the…