In every large and diverse country, federalism matters not just for political stability but also for economic development. The decentralisation of ....Read More
MYOPIC MICROMANAGEMENT by NITIN DESAI The Union Government must not try and micro-manage what corporate managem....Read More
POLITICAL CULTURE by NITIN DESAI A country as diverse as ours needs a political culture rooted in constitutiona....Read More
Good governance requires good politics, something we are seriously short of now. Today our political process is rife wi....Read More
Keynes said that “If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble competent people on a level w....Read More
There is a great deal of talk these days that the revival of growth will require major policy reforms. Vijay Kelkar and....Read More
When the Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman presented her first budget in July 2019, this columnist, like many ot....Read More
The past week has seen the rapid spread of public protests against the NRC and the CAA. Besides the immediate cause, th....Read More
We are now entering the last leg of one of the nastiest election campaigns that we have seen in this country. There has....Read More
In April 1947 the Constituent Assembly of India decided on holding elections on the basis of universal suffrage to fulf....Read More
Over the past few weeks we have heard a lot about the Rafale deal in the political playground and the media. The focus ....Read More
Are coalition governments bad for the economy? This, question has arisen because of the high probability that the comin....Read More
Tomorrow is Christmas Day, the highpoint of a season of goodwill and a time to remember the benign aspects of religious....Read More
The Government has opened up the issue of the relationship between the Finance Ministry and the RBI. The public critici....Read More
Thousands of scientists, academics and students staged a March for Science in August 2017 and April 2018 all over India....Read More
The recent Supreme Court judgement on the Cauvery waters dispute has provoked this reflection on water governance. ....Read More
Seventy years ago, on this day, was our tryst with destiny. The hopes, articulated forcefully by Pandit Nehru in that g....Read More
The massive demonetisation exercise undertaken by the government has caused widespread disruption of cash transactions.....Read More
The severe drought that has hit many parts of India has reminded us about the vulnerability of rural areas to....Read More
Why are so many economists writing about the current state of politics in India? Clearly they have not run out of thing....Read More
Fifty years ago the American historian, Richard Hofstadter wrote a seminal essay on "The Paranoid Style in American Pol....Read More
The Government's decision to wind up the Planning Commission and replace it with another institution has led to a spate....Read More
In his Independence Day speech the Prime Minister announced the end of the Planning Commission.....Read More
In a days time we will know what the Indian electorate has decided. Opinion and exit polls, media pundits and armchair ....Read More
The Aam Aadmi party's spectacular debut in the Delhi election has shaken up India's political class because it was an e....Read More
The Kelkar Committee Report on fiscal consolidation focusses quite understandably on the next three years because it is....Read More
Why do infrastructure projects in India fall prey to giganticism? Is it the grandiose vision of engineers whose culture....Read More
A new team of the Prime Minister and two trusted lieutenants, Dr. Rangarajan and Montek Ahluwalia has taken charge of t....Read More
The Right to Education law and the subsequent Supreme Court judgement has focused attention on the future of school edu....Read More
The next Prime Minister of India will wield even less authority over his cabinet colleagues than Dr. Manmohan Singh. Th....Read More
In the second half of August the nation witnessed a struggle between constitutional propriety and populist democracy.....Read More
Anna Hazare and Ramdev have taken up a campaign against corruption and black money– out of sincere belief in one ....Read More
The crisis of governance that has hit with the force of a tsunami has been brewing for a long time.....Read More
The nation witnessed a tragedy unfold in slow motion as the Government and the Supreme Court clashed on the appointment....Read More
The role of the government in the operation of land transactions has once again hit the headlines.....Read More
This has been a bad year for the Republic. The economy may have recovered with the revival of growth....Read More
Two months ago this column had dealt with the challenge of the Maoist insurgency in Central India. In that context it r....Read More
The meticulously planned attack by the Maoists on the CRPF in Dantewada has shocked the Delhi Establishment. This episo....Read More
This column has been provoked by a current dispute between two publicly listed companies that has been linked to a fami....Read More
The Indian economy is going to face a difficult time for at least another year and a half.....Read More
The terrorist attack in Mumbai exposed the gross inadequacies of governance at many levels.....Read More
A few days ago a Hindu-CNN-IBN survey came out with results that must have surprised many in the Delhi dinner circuit a....Read More
On 7 May 2005, a well-organized group of leftist revolutionaries attacked and laid waste Hindalco’s mine in Chhattisgarh. Those absorbed in t....Read More
The roots of corruption lie in the way our political system works. Last months column[i] argued that par....Read More
The 2004 ranking of countries in the Corruption Perception Index prepared by Transparency International places India at ranks 90 out of 145, sharin....Read More
The Indian economy has never been a planned one in a strict sense of the term. Yes, the Planning Commission has been around for well over fif....Read More