LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
DEMOCRACY sometimes teaches strange lessons, and the strangest of them all is currently being acted out in the remote North- eastern state of Assam. Since…
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Letter from the Editor
THERE can be little more excitement for the media than to chronicle political events from inception to climax. Opportunities tend to be rare, but as…
FEELIN’GOOD
IT IS GOOD THAT WE ARE FEELING BUCKED UP AT THE BEGINNING of 2018. Major economies expect growth in tandem for the first time since…
Interview- India’s Sinha wants to go for growth
2 June 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 2 (Reuters) – India’s Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha put up a spirited…
Interview- India targets not just “hope and prayer”
3 June 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 3 (Reuters) – India’s fiscal targets for the current year are not…
The Dauphin and the Figurehead
Timing is everything, and with a number of state elections soon, leading to the general election next year, the cynicism and opportunism are manifest. The…
Earthy Tales
Last week I was on a flight to Mumbai About two hours in, the captain an- nounced that there was unseasonal heavy rain ahead and…
Eight Innovations That Delighted Consumers and What India can Learn From Them
I had never handled a tool in my life; and yet, in time, by labour, application, and con- trivance, I found at last that I…
India’s Coolest Start-Ups
Some things were on a fast track as the heat dragged us into the dog days of June, and some were on a slow track.…
Home Truths
And now at the end he found himself in his own house, on his own half-lot of land, his own portion of the earth. That…
Hello, Tomorrow
I had my epiphany on a Seoul subway in 2004. All around me, young men and women rode to work silently, mesmerised by television programmes…
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND
Hiteswar Saikia was last Fortnight trying to settle into the hottest seat in India-the chief ministers hip of Assam. The diminutive, balding ‘politician had been…
The Burning Of Assam
The fuse has been burning for almost four years and the mood in the state has passed through all the faces of anger, despair and…
A State Ravaged
It was beyond the ken of a civilised society, a blood spattered vindication of a heartless government’s sudden constitutional piety. The carnage began with a…
ENDS OF JUSTICE
Gauhati and Jorhat and small batches people took out processions in protest against the decision to hold the elections. Even political parties opposed to the…
Interview: Anil Agarwal
“Everybody is going to die, but I am going to die last” He started out as a scrap trader in Patna. Today, with a personal…
TOILET -TRAINING INDIA
On September 25, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the Gates Foundation’s Global Goalkeepers Award in New York for his leadership of the Swachh…
Panic Button
Reading An Account of the Great Fear, or Grande Peur, that swept across France in July and August of 1789, I was struck by the…
SHOW ME THE JOBS
The government is striving mightily, but the needle is moving inexorably lower on the jobs meter. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and the…
A FIRST-RATE PROBLEM
India’s economy is lurching like a car with two flat rear tyres. The monsoon has been better than expected: a bumper kharif crop is expected,…
CLOSE,, BUT NO CIGAR
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.…
FINGER ON THE PULES?
Two-third of indians depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. As our farm crisis deepens, the government is tinkering around the edges by pushing irrigation, rural…
KEEP THE BALLAST
Narender Modi’s first term in office will be bracketed by malodorous stand-offs with two governors of the Reserve Bank of India. The bad blood between…
TOO BIG TO FAIL
Independence day is a good excuse for some economic chest-thumping. We should be proud that lndia is a free-enterprise democracy. Imagine the world’s burden if…
Glass Half-Full?
We can hope that in the run-up to the next general election we will not suffer the type of jolts to our nervous systems that…
Identify Yourself
The Fates Of the four million people whose names did not appear in the ‘complete draft’ of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam…
ONE NATION, 173 M VOTERS
To be precise, 173, 213, 635 Voters aged 21 years or above. That was the total on the electoral rolls published, constituency by constituency, between…
VIRAL FEVER
Start exercise your smartphone thumb, because the next big election will be fought on our mobiles. The latest Internet and Mobile Association of India survey…
The Dog’s tail
There is no loophole that has not met an Indian taxpayer. A Hindi proverb says you can never straighten a dog’s tail (kutte ki poonch…).…
Clutching At Straws
We are so frozen in the headlights of the on rushing slowdown that even a flicker leads us to believe that we have seen friendly…
VULTURE CULTURE
PSYCHOPATHY. VOYEURISM. SADISM. Schadenfreude. Vicarious pleasure. Blood lust. You will find several terms to describe the human tendency to find a strange satisfaction, indeed fulfilment,…