Ministers’ competencies come for criticism!

The Bombay blasts had devastated the nation.200 dead, 700 injured in a few minutes in several places! This is too much.  But distressed the country much more is the sort of response and the sort of immediate explanations from the Government. Tavleen Singh, the veteran columnist, writing from her Bombay flat, noted the word from the PMO was not good, the midnight dash by Sonia Gandhi and Shivraj Patil had no purpose and the Home Minister’s reply to questions that the Government would do take action was “namby pamby”! She seems to have asked the Home Minister (and indirectly through him his Prime Minister and the higher-ups in Delhi) what about the cases your government had been pursuing since 1993, in a similar blast in the same city.

She had a point. The very same point was made by several others, the TV channels asked the same question and the channels were flooded with the same question! There were so much interactive sessions the Channels had and we saw everyone, from the more senior leaders and experts to others the same question echoed. The participants also raised the same question. So, it won’t be an exaggeration to say the government in Delhi had become very insensitive and very lethargic and to say the least the government has no new ideas to deal with the rise of terrorism in the country.

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Kerala seeks control over five dams!

Supreme Court directs the raising of the height of Narmada Dam!

Yes, the inter-state waters disputes are no more news. They make news whenever the state politicians have no other purposeful jobs on hand!  So, comes the news of persisting inter-state rivers disputes, from one state or other. Now, the latest is the news coming from the new Government in Kerala under the veteran V.S.Achuthanandan. He made his reputation as a hardliner inside the party and now in power it is for him to show his mettle.

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Economic nationalism in industry and agriculture

The India-born Lakshmi Mittal’s takeover of the Europe’s biggest stall maker, Arcelor, now Arcelor-Mittal Steel, made lots of headlines for months. The major European governments, France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, the Presidents  and Prime Ministers of these countries raised a hue and cry over their own nationalistic industry (they held major shares in the steel company based in Luxembourg) has being taken over by an “Indian”!   These great leaders made so many insulting remarks on the Indians,  inferior race etc and business practices. But then the determined Indian entrepreneur won ultimately and he had been hailed a hero in India. Rightly so!

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PM’s loss of face, a pity! PM must have educated the people and the allies about his core economic vision and his basic beliefs in economic reforms. This he had failed to do and the consequences for the image of the country, than for his personal stakes, is much more serious. Will the UPA retrieve the lost ground or will it lead up to early mid-term polls?  PM’s NLC, NALCO disinvestment fiasco proved a great embarrassment to the PM’s credibility as an architect of economic reforms. Dr.Manmohan Singh is an internationally respected economist. This enviable reputation had had earned with his innate abilities and also an astute management of his skills in economic analysis as well as his management of every opportunity that came his way.

As the ultimate prize came the opportunity to serve as the Prime Minister of India. By all accounts, this has been a success story unlike any other. There have been great many Indians who have spent their life time in politics but the ultimate prizes, be it Cabinet Ministers or Prime Ministers don’t come that much easily. But today we have seen politics is so changed that even the sons of regional politicians just bag the Cabinet minister’s posts by virtue of being the sons of regional bosses who keep the coalitions at the Centre. By this development or developments, we find Dr.Singh also becoming the PM without firing a shot so to say!

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UP is always in the news. For all its political importance. But the State is known for its extreme complexity in all its many dimensions, political complexity, political instability and the big number MPs who make up the composition of the Central Government in all desirable and undesirable ways!

UP’s economic and social backwardness is very galling, to say the least! By any parameters of development UP is a laggard. Of course other bimaru States, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan, Orissa and W.Bengal also come to the fore when it comes to count the very basic growth indicators. The Human Development Index is very poor for these States.  If you keep out all the mass-level leaders from the levers of power as the Sonia Gandhi-dictated policy now provides, there can’t be any sustainable solution to the problems at the ground level.  The State level politics, democratic politics, must reflect the State level realities. We mean the political socio-economic realities. If it doesn’t, then what you will be having is either the vice-like grip of the extremist politics is one kind or other. The W.Bengal Leftists, the CPI (M) leftists and their allies are relying on some worn-out thesis of land reforms etc. Only now Mr.Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee gives some hope.

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Finance Minister can’t do much in such matters!

Prices of food items rising, inflation a worry the government most just now! There is now an emerging crisis on the economic front. It is the inflation, rather the rising inflation. The word inflation is a difficult word. We don’t think that except some economist experts like Prime Minister of other professional economists inflation is intelligible. Certainly, a politician like the Finance Minister or any other Minister, the subject would be intelligible only as much as his economic advisers give him what inflation is all about, the measurement and the ways to control it.

One obvious way, the monetary way to control rising prices is to tighten the money supply in the system. But then the monetary approach is only a veil, a way of  hiding the harsh economic realities, the market realities is all the general public and the Leftist politicians are concerned with. Whenever there is arise in prices or a runaway price rise in several sensitive commodities like food items, then there is a general hue and cry.

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This is the time for farmers, farm entrepreneurs!

To invest and make big money in the farm sector!

You have to know the changes in our economic sectors and policies! You have to know the new opportunities. New innovative agri projects are coming up. Almost everyday! So many people ask us, they visit us or talk over the phone and we find almost all of them are so ignorant of how the current agri scene is changing fast.

Only when some big name/names like Sunil Mittal or Reliance announces they enter the agri sector, then the urban press reports. There are hundreds of farmers’ success stories no body reports. Also, there is no idea of what a market means to any average farmer. The new generation farmers, entrepreneurs must know, study the existing markets for farm products, more importantly, the emerging markets, the market potentials, the new market that could be created for several new products and processes. Our focus is primarily to draw new investors, entrepreneurs to the agri sector. Entrepreneurs, from within the farming families or from outside, are now taking interest in investing in many innovative enterprises.

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It is now an American  discipline!

When I studied economics in the late Fifties economics was essentially an English discipline.  It is no more! There are not  many  students now to study economics or do PhDs!It is now more an American discipline. In India economics still has some glamour but things are changing very fast here too. Economics doesn’t give immmediate jobs! In my time it was the British universities, more so the Cambridge University that dominated the discipline.All the  bright brains were there. Keynes, his colleagues(list is long) were very around him. There were fierce arguments, about economic theories propounded by Keynes. Economic theory as such was undergoing change since the time of Adam Smith,the first propounder of economics,as a self-driven,wealth creating process. He of course took it from the French Physiocrats.  Now in Keynes time it was all theory of equilibrium that explained  the  balance of  economic forces. Prices, demand, supply, fiscal  deficit, rate of employment, growth etc. Then Keynes introduced  the famous line:”in  the long-run we would all be dead”. So he introduced short-term,practical, interventionist ecnomic theory. Amartya Sen is a descendent of this theory only, in spite his taking the theory forward. Sen would be remembered for his contribution to the construction of the Human Development Index. However, since Sen there have been  new revolutionary theories of economics that had gone on to win Nobel Prizes. and thus new rcognitions.One is Paul Ormerod who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1993. Read the rest of this entry »

Private Foreign Universities to enter India

Higher Education in India set to expand?

What about the OBC demands?

To ensure international quality university education, we have to rank the higher education institutions, as they do in the West; identify the Ivy League tables etc. Indian higher education priorities are dictated by the fast growing demand for graduates for the IT/ITes? BPO industry’s furious growth. This in our opinion is a positive development. Gone are the days of educated unemployment, a tag that clanged to the educated youth. Just now we read a book titled” Knowledge Monopolies: The Academisation of Society”. Another book on the same topic:” The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton”.

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Teach history of ideas, world history of religions!

The recent Mumbai blasts that took such a heavy toll, 8 bombs in 30 minutes, killing 200  people and injuring 500 more, is only the latest reminder, if reminder is needed, for the need for the society at large to deeply introspect on so many ills that make our life so insecure and disturbing. Yes, we are making material progress, making lots of money, the Indian middle class that is vocal and opinion-making and gives a more confident outlook. That is all very encouraging and gives hope.

Yet, what makes for such repeated violence, terrorism of a worst kind that grips the country. There is a commentary the next day of the blasts on why the terrorist attack.” Fallout of city’s extreme politics?” runs the headlines. Then we find that there is indeed such a background to the eruption of the serial blasts. Mumbai’s politics has all the unsavory character we associate with extremist politics.

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