LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
THERE are, said the poet Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. The essence of that particular truth came home forcefully last fortnight…
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ADB COMES UNDER FIRE FOR LENDING POLICIES
29 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 29, Reuter – The Asian Development Bank’s lending policies came under fire at…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…