THE HUMAN TRAGEDY
It is a war without end, a no-win situation in which nobody can provide answers to some questions: How long will this go on? Which…
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India’s Marxist veteran looks back with pride
CALCUTTA, India, June 15 (Reuter) – The leader of the world’s oldest democratically elected communist government looked back on his 20 years in power and…
ASIAN RICE SUPPLY PLAGUED BY SHORTAGES, SOARING PRICES
24 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited LOS BANOS, Philippines, May 24, Reuter – Asia’s rice producers, reeling from the effects of…
CALCUTTA’S INDIANS TAKE ELECTIONS IN STRIDE
21 November 1989  Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited Calcutta, Nov 21, Reuter – The six Bengalis splashing around a fire hydrant inches from…
26 KILLED ON SECOND DAY OF INDIA’S GENERAL ELECTION
24 November 1989 Reuters News  English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited LUDHIANA, India, Nov 24, Reuter – At least 26 people were killed on Friday on…
India aims to grant autonomy to state-owned media
27 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 27 (Reuter) – India is determined to grant autonomy to state-controlled television…
I have to follow capitalism: Buddha
IT IS like being thrown about in an ideological cocktail shaker. You get off a gleaming passenger jet and drive over a soaring expressway to…
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…
Garam hawa
India must construct an enlightened climate change policy ‘FOOD PRICES set to rise as floods ruin crops’. ‘Prime Minister promises aid to flood victims’. Does…
MANILA UNLOADS SUGAR STOCKS TO CURB PRICE RISE
17 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 17 – The Philippines” Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) has ordered all its reserve…
Ready For Battle
I remember sticking an aluminium one-yen coin and a copper one-US-cent coin to my computer screen in Tokyo around the mid-1990s and watching in fascination…
IT’S THE ELECTION, STUPID
The economy is whirling around in a populist spiral Pranab Mukherjee is starting to look worryingly like a feckless heir squandering his generous inheritance while…
Modi Unlimited
Coasting down the six-lane highway from Ahmedabad to Gandhinagar, wheels barely touching the asphalt, it is tempting to forget that you are in the India…
Energy Shock: India Story Risks Running Out Of Steam
This has been a summer of discontent, and the portents are not auspicious. One day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced his second underwhelming Cabinet…
The Best Companies To Work For
Know one’s onions” means to know one’s subject well. But do we really know why our economy fares as it does, how supply and demand…
Going Nowhere
I remember my first car with great fondness. It was a Fiat 1100D, and I crashed it barely a month after my wife and I…
Pester Power
Remember when mall meant a tree-shaded promenade in Shimla or one of those picturesque cantonment towns, and plastic was when your grandmother graduated from tin…
TYRE PRICES – VASTLY OVER-INFLATED
Tyers are one essential commodity over which the Government seems to exert no control whatsoever. In the last six months prices have risen twice. And…
From Flood To Trickle
Large advertisements in Delhi newspapers-last fortnight announced that Mother Dairy was being forced to dilute the fat content of milk supplied to the capital’s citizens…
The Method Man
Gujarat’s Chief Minister tells Chaitanya kalbag in a wide-ranging interview that policy and process make a heady development cocktail Narendra Modi is not a tall…
Lemmings or Llamas?
The US is on life support, and Asian creditors led by China, which holds $1.16 trillion of US treasuries, control the intravenous drip. Asian central…
THE DAISY’S PETALS
It’s a NAIL-BITER. I predicted in another column that the Lok pal Search Committee of eight eminent persons might cap a five-year slow waltz just…
GREAT STRESS TEST
Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and the Grand Stupid Thought, the headline is my humble contribution to your lexicon.…
HOLLOWING OUT
Privatisation will work only when the government sells more than 50 per cent of a state-owned company’s capital to the public and relinquishes management control.…
SELL SELL SELL
Two numbers speak eloquently about our schizophrenia over privatisation: the Rs 2.11trillion ($32.5 billion) package announced on October 24 to recapitalise public-sector banks (PSBs); and…
BHAG PIYUSH BHAG
Piyush Goyal is a chartered accountant, lawyer, former investment banker, former Bharatiya Janata Party treasurer, and a go-getter. Goyal, who likes taking leadership courses (currently…
HOW TO MAKE MORE WITH LESS
How much a hurry is prime minister Narender Modi in? It depends on your horizon. By one measure, he has 22 months, but then he…
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…
FUTURE TENSE
So let’s see: 2018 is supposed to be a good year for India. We have low inflation, the monsoon may be normal, manufacturing is finally…
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…
RED-LETTER DAYS
This is a year of anniversaries , some unpleasant, some prescient, some momentous. CE 2019 is important not only because of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s…
NaMo the FMCG
If you want to decompress from the 2019 election campaign, and haven’t already donned the colours to be a cheering face in a shouting crowd…
Off the Blocks
For the second time in five years, I was struck by how apposite Rud-yard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ is in relation to Narendra Modi. At one…