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Reading between the lines of the budget, it was clear the 1,00,000 crore rupees (or 1 trillion rupees) are being stolen from the citizenry by the personnel of ‘the system’, both elected as well as appointed.
50,000 crore rupees (500 billion) are being spent on the 8 ‘flagship programmes’, including the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Sarva […]

My column, “Antidote”, which ran in The Economic Times from 1998-2002 is back, this time as a monthly offering on The New Indian Express on Sunday. This time, the topic of discussion is imports, and why “import-promotion” is a very good idea! Enjoy the difference!

Prime minister Manmohan has hinted at a new pay commission that will significantly raise the salaries of our ‘misproductive’ babus. Which rational Maharaja would jeopardize the health of his treasury by recruiting millions and paying them wages higher than market rates?
Those who worry about the fiscal problems that will surely follow may note that William […]

Another blow for unilateral free trade and methodological individualism - this time from The New Indian Express on Sunday - the south Indian paper.

Every barbarian knew how to bring a city to its knees: he laid siege to the city. How did he achieve this? Let us take the example of the walled city of Delhi, as it was even 500 years ago, and think up what any barbarian would do to lay siege to the town.
The walled […]

I have an article at TechCentralStation arguing that India should abandon the WTO and opt for unilateral free trade. There is a lot to gain from this approach, as imports of cheap food, cheap cars (second-hand) and cheap everything else will mean that the possessions of every Indian will increase in a quantum jump. The […]

Cristopher Lingle has a nice article at TechCentralStation on India, which begins by saying how rich we and our rulers were when the great European explorations began; how even little Indian princes were rich. It discusses why we are poor today, and what be done for the future of today’s youth.

Here is the full, unedited text of a provocatively titled piece I wrote for The Times of India.
Communists despise private property and idealise commonly held property. But I’ll bet Brinda and Prakash Karat don’t share a toothbrush! So let us conduct a “reductio” thought experiment as to what would happen in a city or town […]

PM Manmohan Singh has just launched an ‘urban renewal’ plan that mainly talks about ‘helping the urban poor’. This, after parliament has legislated to the government the responsibility of ‘guaranteeing employment’ to the rural poor. For how long will the poor suffer such insincere affection? Blatant ‘pork barrel politics’ designed to add to the powers […]

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got it right in his first televised address to the nation when he said that it would be his top priority to get the government machinery to work properly, and that reforming this machinery would be his topmost priority. This first lecture by the PM went down well with Indians from […]

The Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman once commented that different schools of economic thought are a myth: there is only good economics and bad economics. Good economics will help a nation to achieve growth, price stability and prosperity while bad economics will achieve just the opposite.
Although there is very little controversy regarding the end objectives of […]

Or how the rich get richer while the poor get poorer
When a bad king debases his currency, by mixing some base metal with gold, he and the officials of his mint act as counterfeiters plain and simple. The immediate effect of the debasement is that the king now has ‘money’ with which to build his […]

The Centre for Civil Society has started a unique Livelihood Freedom Campaign.
After the 1991 liberalisation, the poor do not seem to have gained as much as the rich. The truth is there has been hardly any liberalisation for the working poor. For them it has been all LPQ (Licences, Permits and Quotas) and little LPG […]

AnarCapLib’s sometime guest-blogger, Sauvik Chakraverti, (when he’s not being beaten up by Kerala lovers), tells us something about the relation between labour and capital.
The hammer and the sickle feature in the party symbol of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Like all left parties, the CPI(M) believes that labour and capital are in disharmony. […]

The Economist has an interesting article on why democracies are slow in eradicating poverty.
Why might democracy militate against poverty reduction in poor countries? Mr Varshney has two suggestions. First, democracies have a bias towards �direct� methods of tackling poverty, such as subsidies and hand-outs, which, in the long run, are less effective than �indirect� methods�ie, […]

There seems to be some problem with adding comments on my Poverty, footwear and cold water post. I’ve closed comments there, but please feel to continue the debate here.
Both the webguru and I are tired of fixing various MT glitches (thanks to all of you who’d emailed with their concerns). We’ll be moving to […]

Swaminathan Aiyar has a revelation for the anti-globalisation, MNC bashing crowd:
…size should not be mistaken for financial power, and MNCs are not financial superpowers. The global market system is not rigged by them. On the contrary, the global market provides plenty of opportunities for good, small companies to beat the biggest giants.
He takes the automobile […]

Omkar Goswami blows the lid of West Bengal’s supposedly high growth rate.
Here lies the rub. The official data published by the state shows it to be the second most powerful growth engine of the nation � not only in terms of growth rates but also in their sheer consistency. Moreover, the rulers claim that this […]

Rediff has published a piece by me on how poverty has decreased in India. It started as a response to Dilip D’Souza, but I make one important point. Anecdotes don’t matter. Dilip talks about the overwhelming poverty he saw while on a train trip. I write about how I see more poor Indians wearing shoes, […]

A lot of cellular operators are unhappy about Reliance Infocomm offering unlimited talktime tariffs (Reports in the Hindu Business Line and Business Standard). They’ve gone crying to TRAI calling it unfair and “predatory”. They’re wrong.
Firstly, it’s not predatory pricing. Note the explanation from Wikipedia:
Predatory pricing is the practice of a dominant firm selling a […]