The government of India is a closed shop; its bureaucracy is recruited in its youth and rises in the hierarchy in order of seniority. One exception to this rule is the chief economic advisor, who...
Raghuram Rajan does not lack confidence. He has been known to take on the world’s best economists and carry his point. He is not easily upset. But recently, he has been sounding more like a...
The Reserve Bank thinks conventionally of itself as a central bank and refuses to stray beyond its role; so most of its publications are deadly boring. Its internal proceedings must be even more so. How...
Who is India’s foreign minister? It happens to be Sushma Swaraj. Who is foreign secretary? That is easier: Subrahmaniam is too common a name; Jaishankar is easier to remember. And who is India’s foreign policy...
Most Indians have a fixed view of Modi – generally an extreme one, whether favourable or unfavourable. None of us gives him a second thought: either he is a god fit for a temple, or...
Haseeb Drabu was a journalist once; he and I were colleagues some 15 years ago. Since then, he has been banker, bureaucrat business advisor, and much else. He has just become finance minister of Jammu...
The Economic Survey is presented the day before the budget; and the budget has to be assessed as soon as it is presented. So it is impossible to write immediately about the Survey. But this...
The budget consists of sixteen documents. Commentators have to say what they can within hours of its presentation. So they concentrate on what the finance minister says, which is just about 10,000 words and is...
Previous year has altered the political picture in striking ways. The most conspicuous change is in prime ministers: reclusive, modest, uncommunicative Manmohan Singh has given way to vocal, expressive, dramatic Narendra Modi. A less noticed change...
Just read a paper on why Africa has not industrialized (Alan Gelb, Christian Meyer and Vijaya Ramachandran, Does Poor Mean Cheap? A Comparative Look at Africa’s Labour Costs, Centre for Global Development, Working Paper No...
